Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marg Rogers, Lecturer, Early Childhood Education, University of New England

More than two-thirds of Australian early childhood educators reported working many extra hours to satisfy regulatory requirements in our 2021 survey. Half did unpaid work during accreditation — the process of demonstrating compliance with all the regulations governing early childhood education. Some were paid for as little as half of the hours they worked.

It’s not like they were well paid in the first place. Early childhood educators are the 13th-lowest-paid workers in Australia.

These educators earn an average of $29.10 an hour. Workers with the minimum of a certificate in childhood services are more likely to earn $23.50 an hour, while those with a diploma or degree earn more. Unqualified workers in male-dominated industries earn far more than workers in the female-dominated early childhood sector.

Read more:
‘Insulting’ and ‘degrading’: budget funding for childcare may help families but educators are still being paid pennies

The stresses of low pay and long hours cause almost one in three early childhood educators to leave the profession each year. This year, a survey found 73% intend to leave the profession in the next three years. Providers are struggling to find qualified staff.

Long hours of unpaid work are common

I’m involved in a transnational study exploring the work of early childhood educators in Australia, Canada and Denmark. The Australian data include survey responses from 50 educators from a range of service types in cities and regional and rural settings.

Some 70% commented on how many extra hours they worked during accreditation, with 50% reporting unpaid hours. Educators said:

“I work a 68-hour week yet get paid for 30 hours.”

“a lot of unpaid hours.”

“Staff were given work to fill in whilst on breaks, often stayed back for unpaid staff meetings and to do extra work.”

“lots of unpaid work to catch up on the documentation that was required”.

To be accredited, services must provide state regulatory authorities with documentary evidence they are meeting or exceeding the measures of quality laid down by the Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). Some participants said the demands from these rigorous quality checks have become “ridiculous”, requiring volumes of documentary evidence.

Preparing this evidence requires time away from the children, whose development depends on quality interactions with their educators. Many said they could not do the documentation in working hours because they were busy teaching children and supporting families.

Why do educators do the extra work? If the service doesn’t pass, it triggers more checks, requiring more frequent documentation. Very few educators said they were paid for this extra time.

When commenting on the number of unpaid hours, some noted the impacts on their family life:

“Too many. It caused stress at home with family.”

“We dedicated over 2 weeks of nights and weekends to be ready for accreditation and registration. Even our husbands came and did work with us.”

“Detrimental. Lack of work life balance during this time.”

Attrition is creating staff shortages

With unfair wages and increased expectations due to COVID-19 health orders, many providers are struggling to staff their services. Research shows educators leave the profession when they can no longer afford to stay.

As quality education and care depend on interactions with individual children, their families and communities, staff turnover is of great concern.

Yet, rather than tackling these issues, the increase in managerialism in Australian education has added to the stresses of poor pay for a demanding job.

Read more:
Our uni teachers were already among the world’s most stressed. COVID and student feedback have just made things worse

What are the impacts of managerialism?

Managerialism creates a system where the worker is positioned as someone who is mistrusted.

In these systems, workers are given highly detailed descriptions of tasks that need to be checked by managers and authorities. Rather than doing the job they were employed to do, workers find themselves busy producing data to show they are following these instructions.

Managers and authorities say this is necessary to ensure quality. Their beliefs about quality are transcribed into voluminous documents. Often these documents are so complex, even longer documents or guides are provided to decipher the original document.

In early childhood education, these include curriculum documents, frameworks and standards. The Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) creates these documents. State and territory regulatory authorities are responsible for ensuring compliance through registration and accreditation — a process of assessment and rating.

Quality may actually suffer

Many educators believed accreditation requirements lowered the quality of education and care during accreditation. One said:

“It is a joke! Everything is so inhibited, and the children and educators are far too over-regulated. The children cannot be free to learn. They cannot go near water, they cannot climb. Fear is instilled into the educators. It is a horrible and restrictive learning environment. It makes the children so small-minded and full of anxiety.”

An ACECQA survey this year found educators intending to leave the sector early blame overwork, administrative overload and burnout.

Read more:
Early childhood educators are leaving in droves. Here are 3 ways to keep them, and attract more

Have authorities unwittingly created an accreditation system that enslaves workers and reduces quality during accreditation periods? Further research is needed to discover the full burden of these compliance systems.

What now?

What can we do about this discovery of excessive unpaid wages and chronic underpayment of our essential workers? Being a slave is defined as being part of the slave trade, but also includes those who do not receive proper remuneration for their work. With a federal election looming, it is another matter to lobby our government about given Australia’s uneasy relationship with slavery.

To recover strongly from the economic impacts of the pandemic, we need strong workplace participation. To support this participation, real reform is needed to provide universal childcare and fully staffed services. The focus must be on creating systems that support quality education and care, not big data and slavery.

Read more:
Quality childcare has become a necessity for Australian families, and for society. It’s time the government paid up

Marg Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Early childhood educators are slaves to the demands of box-ticking regulations – https://theconversation.com/early-childhood-educators-are-slaves-to-the-demands-of-box-ticking-regulations-167283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giuseppe Carabetta, Senior Lecturer, Sydney University Business School, University of Sydney

After violence on Monday outside the Melbourne offices of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy union, the Victorian government ordered a snap two-week shutdown of the construction industry. Yesterday these protests continued, with up to 2,000 demonstrators holding up traffic around Melbourne’s CBD and clashing with police.

The shutdown of building sites is a perverse outcome for those protesting primarily over vaccination mandates but who also oppose lockdowns.

So why were they directing their fury not at the government that imposed the mandate, nor the employers who will enforce the rules, but the union that represents construction workers? Let’s work through it.

What was Monday’s protest about?

The ostensible catalyst was the Victorian government’s announcement on September 16 that by Friday (September 23) all construction workers must show their employer:

• evidence they have received at least their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine
• proof of vaccine appointment to receive a first dose by October 2
• or a medical exemption from an authorised medical practitioner.

The government also announced new site rules that include the closure of tearooms and a ban on consuming food or drinks indoors. This led to workers on sites around the city setting up tables and chairs in the street last Friday, causing minor inconvenience to motorists. The CFMMEU was sympathetic to these protests.

So why the protest against the union?

In the days before the vaccination mandate was announced, the CFMMEU’s state secretary, John Setka, said the union did not support mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.

But in a radio interview on Thursday he described the mandate as a unfortunate reality of living in a pandemic. “Extreme circumstances sometimes call for extreme measures,” he told 3AW radio host Tom Elliott. “It’s unfortunate, but it is what it is.”

These comments were turned into memes and shared by social media activists on platforms such as Telegram, fomenting anger against Setka as a traitor.

What is the CFMEU’s position on vaccines?

Setka and the union have strongly promoted construction workers getting vaccinated. In August the CFMMEU launched a media campaign encouraging its members to get vaccinated. Setka has had himself photographed getting vaccinated.

But the union has also opposed mandatory vaccination — particularly vaccine mandates imposed by employers. Its public position has been it will “always advocate for safety, jobs, and freedom of choice”. That includes freedom of choice about whether to be vaccinated. It has threatened action against any employer seeking to make vaccination a job requirement without a government-imposed mandate.

In August, for example, the union’s NSW state secretary Darren Greenfield said: “We call on the government to release the pressure on members that do not want to get the vaccination, never will get the vaccination because that’s their personal choice, and allow them to get back to work.”

However, the union sees a government-imposed vaccine mandate as something it can’t do much about — nor one it wants to expend energy on.

Is this the same or different to other unions?

Each union has its own leadership and there are different positions being adopted. But the construction union’s approach has been broadly the same as the Australian Council of Trade Unions, which has supported vaccination but also consistently opposed individual companies having the power to mandate vaccines.

The ACTU and the Business Council of Australia have issued a joint statement
that vaccination “should be free and voluntary” and that “for the overwhelming majority of Australians your work or workplace should not fundamentally alter the voluntary nature of vaccination”.

They have called on governments to “ensure that where mandatory vaccination requirements are necessary (in a small number of high-risk workplaces), they are implemented through the use of nationally consistent Public Health Orders”.

Read more:
Why unions support vaccination — but not employer mandates

What do the protesters want the union to do?

The protesters’ agenda appears straightforward. They want the union to oppose the government’s vaccine mandate at all costs, by any means at the union’s disposal.

What exactly the union could do even if it wanted to, though, isn’t all that clear. Industrial action — that is, striking — is not an option.

The Fair Work Act allows for protected (i.e. lawful) industrial action only when collective bargaining negotiations are at play. If a union took unprotected industrial action, an affected employer could apply to the Fair Work Commission have this stopped, and dock employees’ pay for a minimum four hours a day for any unprotected industrial action.

The union has said it will “represent members if their employment is affected” by vaccine mandates. This could include funding legal challenges to state or employer vaccine mandates.

So who organised this protest?

This is still unclear. Setka has said only a minority of those at Monday’s protest were construction workers or union members, with the rest being far-right activists and professional protesters. Other sources have said most were construction workers.

Read more:
‘It’s almost like grooming’: how anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and the far-right came together over COVID

There is evidence that notable anti-lockdown activists were in the crowd, as well as at least one far-right organiser.

Anti-vaccination and fringe political groups have also previously sought to foment protests and other action by aged-care workers, truck drivers and teachers.

Giuseppe Carabetta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What are the protests against Victoria’s construction union all about? An expert explains – https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-protests-against-victorias-construction-union-all-about-an-expert-explains-168367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Doran, Lecturer in Creativity and Innovation, Transdisciplinary School, UTS, University of Technology Sydney

A new project that spotlights the strain from COVID-19 on our health systems and the people who work in them has invited health-care leaders and artists to create artworks that illuminate what it has been like leading, working and living through the pandemic.

The culmination of this collaboration is Topsy Turvy, an interactive digital exhibition initiated by the Knowledge Translation Strategic Platform of Maridulu Budyari Gumal SPHERE (Sydney Partnership for Health Education Research and Enterprise) whose purpose is to change the future of health care.

Topsy Turvy is a random image generator that makes combinations from a bank of drawings and text inspired by experiences of COVID-19. Users can opt to keep, delete and resize until they feel they have an image that resonates.

To create Topsy Turvy, 15 leaders affiliated with SPHERE shared images, songs, and reflections on working within and with the health system during the first wave of COVID-19 in 2020. Together, these contributions offered a rich palette of imagery and text — from recording a Dylan-esque song to a meditative movie of dragonflies over a lilypond.

Topsy Turvy was created to translate diverse experiences of COVID-19 through drawings, text and sound. In turn these elements have been transformed into an interactive digital platform where people can create visual expressions of their own.

Art in health

Creative responses to health(care) and well-being are on the rise in health-care settings and in the arts.

Arts-based approaches enable people to connect, express themselves and share knowledge about important health and social issues. Some experiences, such as physical or emotional pain, can be hard to put into words, and the arts offer alternative ways to explore and convey them.

These projects can also engage diverse populations, generate empathy and tackle inequalities.

Collaborative storytelling

For Topsy Turvy, artist and creative director (and one of the authors of this piece) Barbara Doran, and artists Anton Pulvirenti, Peter Maple and Annie McKinnon took stories provided by health-care leaders and used them as sources to create an interactive digital environment, giving audiences an opportunity to create their own COVID-19 collage. Using the platform, audiences can reinterpret the leaders’ contributions anew to tell their own story.

Peter Maple described how the words and photographic materials provided suggest feelings, rhythms and prevailing moods. Anton approaches drawing as an act of listening where he looks for common themes while imagining how drawing styles can open up a kind of non-verbal conversation with the storytellers. Annie McKinnon created this interactive digital exhibition akin to a live concert, where audiences can dance and make experiences together.

The leaders who contributed to this exhibition lead large teams within health-care organisations. Peter Joseph, the Chairman of the Black Dog Institute, took up winter ocean swimming as a new COVID-19 activity. For the Topsy Turvy exhibition, he shared a photograph of six winter ocean swimmers. He wrote:

COVID has demanded we keep perspective and think about what is important and not get captured by the conditions. I have learnt to be more open and expansive, understanding that in the grand scheme of things, we are tiny and here for such a short time.

Amanda Larkin, the Chief Executive of South Western Sydney Local Health District, located in a COVID-19 hotspot, celebrated “the power of collaboration at a large-scale, and the changes that can be achieved”. Kate McGrath at the University of Technology Sydney, agreed: in research, education and industry “imaginary and self-created divisions between disciplines and institutions disappear when faced with this level of change.”

Les Bokey, Professor of Surgery and Clinical Dean at Western Sydney University, wrote about “a very rapid adaptation to a new environment”. This included changing operating rooms to deal only with emergencies and category 1 patients. “This has been a year to remember, rather one to forget”, he noted.

Working creatively in 2021

The executive director of SPHERE, Mark Parsons, reflected:

Unsurprisingly, in 2021, themes continue to resonate. The COVID-19 situation in Sydney has placed enormous challenges on our health systems. Sometimes, the systems in place aren’t able to reach impacted communities quickly. We need to work creatively to be able to respond better.

Read more:
The importance of art in the time of coronavirus

Since launching the exhibition, new collages and reflections have been shared. For Katrina Moore, Program and Community Manager at the University of Technology Sydney, the experience of interacting with Topsy Turvy made her:

think about the health sector, how many different perspectives and experiences there are of the current situation […] My image was quite layered and busy… a reflection of my mind at the moment I guess.

You can create your own collage at Topsy Turvy and view the growing gallery on the #sphereintheknow Instagram page.

Katherine Boydell receives funding from the Sydney Partnership for Health Education Research and Enterprise to support the Knowledge Translation Platform.

Ann Dadich receives funding from the Sydney Partnership for Health Education Research and Enterprise.

Chloe Watfern works for the Sydney Partnership for Health Education Research and Enterprise Consumer and Community Involvement and Knowledge Translation Platform.

Katherine M Boydell receives funding from the Sydney Partnership for Health Education Research and Enterprise for the Knowledge Translation platform.

Stephanie Habak works for the Sydney Partnership for Health Education Research and Enterprise (SPHERE) Consumer Community Involvement and Knowledge Translation Platform.

– ref. What this collaboration between artists and health-care leaders teaches us about living through COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/what-this-collaboration-between-artists-and-health-care-leaders-teaches-us-about-living-through-covid-19-167637

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

After mishandling its cancellation of the French submarines contract, the Morrison government is making things worse by suggesting the French really must have, or should have, known what was coming.

As Labor keeps saying on the domestic front, Scott Morrison doesn’t like admitting mistakes.

Instead of accepting the government blundered diplomatically by not giving France proper notice Australia would ditch the $90 billion contract, Morrison has doubled down.

Arriving in the United States, he said: “I had made it very clear that a conventional submarine would no longer be meeting our strategic interests and what we needed those boats to do.

“That had been communicated very clearly many months ago. We were working through those issues.”

This amounts to saying one of two things. That the French fury (as distinct from the “disappointment” Morrison and ministers endlessly repeat from the government’s talking points) is simply confected. Or that the French are plain stupid.

It smacks of trying to find a way to avoid saying Australia stuffed up the diplomacy.

Morrison also said “it was not possible for us to be able to discuss such secure issues in relation to our dealings with other countries at that time”.

Does this really hold up, especially given the closeness of the United States-France relationship?

Read more:
View from The Hill: For Morrison AUKUS is all about the deal, never mind the niceties

It is one thing to say the earlier stages of the negotiations of AUKUS had to be secret – it is another matter humiliating the French by implying they are so untrustworthy they had to be kept in the dark until the last minute.

By its cack-handed diplomacy, or lack of diplomacy, the Australian government set off waves that have created problems with spillover effects for its AUKUS partners, especially the US, with whom the French would have been unhappy anyway.

Faced with France’s anger with America, President Joe Biden quickly sought a call with President Emmanuel Macron to attempt to smooths things.

Read more:
The AUKUS pact, born in secrecy, will have huge implications for Australia and the region

Asked in his New York whether he would be talking with Macron before he met European leaders and Biden, Morrison said there was “not an opportunity for that at this time”. He was “sure that opportunity will come in time”.

“But right now, I understand the disappointment, and they’re working through the consultations with their ambassador who’s returned to Paris and we will be patient about that,” Morrison.

He went on: “We will engage with European leaders, importantly, we’ll continue to engage with ASEAN leaders.”

Morrison spoke to Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo on his way to the US. “I was able to reassure him, particularly about the issues on non-proliferation.” The Indonesians had raised concerns about AUKUS. The Malaysians will require some work too.

To deal with the diplomatic fallout, the most logical course would be for Morrison to concede the lack of proper notice and consultation, in a direct conversation with Macron.

We don’t know whether the PM has made an attempt to call Macron in the wake of the blow up (his office did not answer when asked). Nor do we know whether Macron would be too busy “washing his hair” to take a Morrison call. On Tuesday (Australian time) the White House said it was “still working on the scheduling” of the Biden call.

For Morrison, a frank leader-to-leader discussion, with an admission things should have been handled better, would be the mature approach, and might limit the damage to Australian interests, including to the trade negotiations with Europe. But the PM is not keen on eating even the smallest slice of humble pie.

Read more:
Podcast with Michelle Grattan: The Furious French and Porter’s fall

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison and Macron need to talk – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrison-and-macron-need-to-talk-168390

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.

In this episode, politics + society editor Amanda Dunn and Michelle discuss the intense backlash from France over the Morrison government’s AUKUS security deal with the United States and the United Kingdom, which will see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines and other sophisticated military technology. As well, they canvass the mounting international pressure on Scott Morrison as he and President Biden talk climate change during the PM’s current US visit.

Michelle and Amanda also discuss Christian Porter’s resignation from the ministry to the backbench after he refused either to find out names of donors who helped fund his defamation action or to give back the money.

Additional audio

Gaena, Blue Dot Sessions, from Free Music Archive.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Podcast with Michelle Grattan: The Furious French and Porter’s fall – https://theconversation.com/podcast-with-michelle-grattan-the-furious-french-and-porters-fall-168391

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.

In this episode, politics + society editor Amanda Dunn and Michelle discuss the intense backlash from France over the Morrison government’s AUKUS security deal with the United States and the United Kingdom, which will see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines and other sophisticated military technology. As well, they canvass the mounting international pressure on Scott Morrison as he and President Biden talk climate change during the PM’s current US visit.

Michelle and Amanda also discuss Christian Porter’s resignation from the ministry to the backbench after he refused either to find out names of donors who helped fund his defamation action or to give back the money.

Additional audio

Gaena, Blue Dot Sessions, from Free Music Archive.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Word from The Hill: The Furious French and Porter’s fall – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-the-furious-french-and-porters-fall-168391

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Baker, Research Fellow in Statistics for Biosecurity Risk, The University of Melbourne

The Doherty Report, released 10 August, underpins the vaccination targets in the federal government’s national reopening plan of 70% and 80% of the population aged over 16. However, since we began this modelling, we have seen large outbreaks in New South Wales and Victoria. These outbreaks prompt questions about how community prevalence affects reopening plans.

The interim report, released on Saturday, addresses the impact of higher daily case numbers when we reach the 70% and 80% threshold; how public health and social measures could be applied between 70% and 80%; and differences between the strategy in each state and territory.

Our first report recommended ongoing “low” restrictions throughout the reopening phase to support vaccination and public health responses. The new results show that if a state or territory has high caseloads when it reaches 70% coverage, cases could still grow quickly at this level of restrictions, leading to a much larger outbreak.

Applying “medium” restrictions until 80% coverage is reached, will greatly reduce the likelihood and potential size of an outbreak. From the 80% coverage level, vaccines do more of the heavy lifting to control infection spread, and so only low level restrictions are likely to be needed.

What does ‘overshoot’ mean and how can we prevent it?

Overshoot refers to the people who get infected as the pandemic is slowing.

When enough of the population is immune to COVID, through a combination of vaccination and past infection, the disease can’t spread any further, and the proportion of population immunity required to prevent spread is reduced through public health and social measures, and contact tracing.

So, as we increase vaccine coverage, there will come a point where each COVID-infected person transmits to fewer than one person on average. But epidemics have momentum and take time to stop. Anyone who gets infected as the epidemic is slowing is part of the overshoot. The danger of significant overshoot is that it will greatly increase the total number of people infected, leading to more hospitalisations and deaths.

By keeping community prevalence low as we transition to high vaccination coverage, we reduce overshoot and keep the total number of infections low.

Read more:
COVID will likely shift from pandemic to endemic — but what does that mean?

Differences by state and territory

When Australia reaches 70% and 80% coverage, every state and territory will be in a different position, both in their own coverage and in COVID prevalence. That means every state and territory will have their own path through these transition phases, as allowed for in the National Plan.

With higher case numbers, there will likely be stronger restrictions for longer, while with lower case numbers the contact tracing system is likely to be more effective and able to control outbreaks with lighter restrictions.

Beyond COVID prevalence, there are also differences in the potential for COVID to spread in each state and territory, which we track using the transmission potential (TP) metric. These differences are driven by a combination of demographics and because baseline behaviours are markedly different across Australia. Higher TP means faster spread, and a TP below 1 means cases should decline.

Projecting the TP when we reach 80% coverage, we predict that if “baseline” population behaviour in Victoria is similar to December 2020, the TP would be 1. However, for Western Australia the TP would be 1.6, if we assume people behave as they did in March 2021. These differences further support our recommendations that ongoing “low” restrictions will provide a more stable level of disease control moving forward.

Situational assessment of TP and short term COVID infection projections are provided weekly for all jurisdictions and will be essential to support decision making over the coming weeks and months.

The National Plan provides flexibility for states and territories to adjust restrictions and policies to manage local case numbers throughout the reopening phases for best outcomes.

Read more:
With a post-lockdown Victoria in sight, the more we can contain transmission now, the easier the road ahead

Where to from here?

The modelling has aimed to inform broad national targets for reopening, but there are many more granular issues to explore and work through at state and local levels to give more detailed advice. These ongoing projects include helping to define sustainable and effective public health responses; optimising local disease control through vaccines and other measures in at-risk populations and settings; and supporting plans to reconnect Australians with the wider world.

Contact tracing will need to shift from an extinction model — chasing down every last contact — to a more sustainable model to identify efficient ways to reduce transmission in the community. We have already seen New South Wales and Victoria moving to text messages to initially notify cases, rather than a phone call.

Fresh research about the severity of the Delta variant confirms that it is more likely to lead to hospitalisation and death than the Alpha variant. This new evidence further endorses our recommendations for a multi-pronged approach to disease control to keep case numbers as low as possible so the health system is able to manage anticipated clinical loads. We will factor this and other emerging evidence into ongoing modelling, including regular situational assessments.

Read more:
Whiteness in the time of COVID: Australia’s health services still leaving vulnerable communities behind

As we move towards reopening, it is critical we carefully monitor the epidemic situation and continually update models as the situation unfolds. If cases grow faster than expected, we should be flexible to either alter restrictions, postpone lifting of restrictions or retreat if indicated.

On the other hand, if baseline health measures or vaccines are more effective than we expect, we may find ourselves in a position to lift restrictions earlier than anticipated.

While there are uncertainties about our future, there is one thing we are certain of. The higher our fully vaccinated coverage goes above 80%, the easier it will be to control COVID, enabling a return to a (COVID) normal life.

Christopher Baker receives funding from The Australian Government Departments of Health and Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Jodie McVernon receives funding from The Australian Government Departments of Health and Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the National Health and Medical Research Council

– ref. Doherty modelling update provides the goalposts, but local insights will determine play – https://theconversation.com/doherty-modelling-update-provides-the-goalposts-but-local-insights-will-determine-play-168364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josh Roose, Senior Research Fellow, Deakin University

Scenes of protesters clad in hi-vis jackets and shouting anti-vaccination slogans have dominated the news this week. As the ABC reported:

Some of those gathered held a banner reading ‘freedom’, while others sang the national anthem and chanted ‘f*** the jab’.

Some attacked union offices, drawing criticism from officials such as ACTU chief Sally McManus, who described the protests as being orchestrated “by violent right-wing extremists and anti-vaccination activists.”

These images may shock some but for researchers like me — who research far-right nationalist and conspiracy movements, and explore the online spaces where these people organise — these scenes came as no real surprise.

Far right nationalists, anti-vaxxers, libertarians and conspiracy theorists have come together over COVID, and capitalised on the anger and uncertainty simmering in some sections of the community.

They appear to have found fertile ground particularly among men who feel alienated, fearful about their employment and who spend a lot of time at home scrolling social media and encrypted messaging apps.

The latest in a continuum

It’s important to see what’s occurring with these protests as part of a continuum rather than a series of unrelated incidents. This week’s protests are related to anti-lockdown protests held in 2020, and earlier this year.

It was at first limited to the conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer crowd. Some were just upset by lockdowns but most of the planning conversation online was being led by anti-vaxxers and QAnon activists.

These movements thrive on anxiety, anger, a sense of alienation, a distrust in government and institutions. It’s really no coincidence this is occurring most vigorously in Melbourne given what this city has been through with lockdowns.

It has really built momentum over the last year and, more recently, been infiltrated by far right groups.

Read more:
Far-right groups have used COVID to expand their footprint in Australia. Here are the ones you need to know about

The far right are capable recruiters

If you go back two years ago, anti-vaxxers were a tiny minority. They have grown significantly in size and influence online.

I have observed in my research the far right consciously appropriating the language of anti-vaxxers, of the conspiracy movements, seeking to exploit their anger and distrust.

I spend a lot of time on the encrypted messaging groups used by these groups and in the online spaces where they organise. I have seen the same names popping up, and growing use of hard right or far right national socialist iconography.

It is almost like grooming. The far right are a lot more capable of recruitment than we give them credit for. They have found an audience who are angry, frustrated and looking for someone to blame.

This is particularly the case among young men who are increasingly attracted to right wing nationalism and make up the majority of protesters. Victoria Police Commissioner Shane Patton has said the majority of protesters at the Saturday protest were men aged 25-40, who came with violent intent.

Many of these groups share similar ideas: that there is a cabal of politicians and elites who are oppressing you. That freedom is at risk, that one must stand up for liberty, that there is a wealthy and unelected ruling class controlling you.

COVID — with all the fear, uncertainty, lockdowns, policing and employment impacts it brings — has helped bring these groups together.

Victoria police earlier this year warned a parliamentary inquiry into extremism that:

online commentary on COVID-19 has provided a recruiting tool for right-wing extremist groups, linking those interested in alternative wellness, anti-vaccination and anti-authority conspiracy theories with white supremacist ideologies.

The far right has really sought to mobilise frustrated people and push them more toward right-wing narratives, particularly white nationalist narratives.

There is a strong historical animosity toward trade unions (as the vanguard of the political left) by the far right. It would be disingenuous to view the far right as unintelligent thugs. They are learned in the history of national socialism and fascism and the preconditions for its rise.

So you see the far right working very hard to undermine trade unions and the way they represent the organised working class. There is an attempt to undermine trust in trade unions and paint them as traitors and sell-outs who are in bed with the government.

Among the protesters there was a really self conscious effort to represent themselves as themselves as tradies and workers. Some observed protest organisers encouraging people to wear hi-vis clothing to these rallies.

It’s important to note the construction industry and trade union movement in general are incredibly diverse, and there will be different and competing views around vaccines, masks and lockdowns.

Some of these protesters actually are tradies, some may not be. Some are union members, others are not. But the broader point is there is a group of people who are incredibly angry about the situation they find themselves in, and resentment is proving fertile terrain for organised groups.

Where to from here?

This is not an easy knot to unpick, but there are three main approaches I think would really help.

The first is we really need to get people back to work. That is critical. People’s self esteem and livelihood is tied up in work and the ability to put food on the table, in staying busy and socially connected (which is often via work).

By ensuring safe, secure employment for people, you really take away one of the main drivers of anger, resentment (and too much time to scroll around social media) that is helping push people toward extremism.

The second is politicians need to think hard and fast about what they can do to help rebuild trust in them, in government and in our institutions. Politicians can’t hide behind press conferences and press releases to get their message out. They need to get out and build trust, face-to-face with the community. Of course, that has been constrained by lockdown but this work is urgent and important. Politicians need to lead and create relationships with the community again.

The third thing is we as a society need to think carefully about social media, and perhaps about regulation. We need a long-term approach to media literacy training, to teach media literacy in schools and to educate people about social media echo chambers.

Read more:
To shut down far-right extremism in Australia, we must confront the ecosystem of hate

Josh Roose receives funding from the ARC. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party.

– ref. ‘It’s almost like grooming’: how anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and the far-right came together over COVID – https://theconversation.com/its-almost-like-grooming-how-anti-vaxxers-conspiracy-theorists-and-the-far-right-came-together-over-covid-168383

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Glenn C. Savage, Associate Professor of Education Policy, The University of Western Australia

Over the past two decades, Australian governments have committed exorbitant energy and resources to transform our nation’s schools.

The driving force behind many reforms has been a narrative of panic and failure, often centred on the steady decline of Australian students on the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

When federal education minister Alan Tudge announced yet another review of teacher education in May, he followed a predictable reform script. Australian students, he said, have “dropped behind” on global PISA rankings, are “being significantly outcompeted” and this will have grave consequences for the nation’s “long-term productivity and competitiveness”.

Tudge set a target to return Australia to the top education nations globally by 2030, and argued more national reforms are needed to make this happen. He was mirroring a long line of similar goals and proclamations from federal ministers who have argued we must pursue common national reforms based on evidence about “what works”.

The problem is, these grand attempts to revolutionise schools are not working.

Read more:
PISA doesn’t define education quality, and knee-jerk policy proposals won’t fix whatever is broken

Not only has Australia gone into a rapid free fall on PISA but multiple other measures of performance have stagnated or gone backwards. Roughly one in five young people in Australia do not complete year 12, intolerable gaps in outcomes persist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, and the race for high ATARs (and entry to elite universities) is dominated by young people from the wealthiest backgrounds.

Australia is replicating a deeply inequitable and underperforming system.

This begs a crucial question: if “what works” doesn’t actually work, then what should we be doing differently? In my new book, The Quest for Revolution in Australian Schooling Policy, I outline multiple ways we could re-imagine schooling reform.

What’s the problem with doing “what works”?

All over the world, governments and policy makers are seeking to align schooling policies to evidence that tells us “what works”.

Underpinning this reform movement is a seductive allure of order, which assumes positive outcomes will flow from standardising diverse schooling systems around common practices that are apparently “proven to work”.

This logic has informed every major schooling reform since the late 2000s, from the introduction of standardised literacy and numeracy testing (NAPLAN) to the creation of an Australian Curriculum based on common achievement standards.

To a casual observer it might seem logical we should aspire to be the world’s best and develop standards based on “the evidence” to achieve that. Yet there are multiple reasons why doing “what works” often doesn’t work at all.

Read more:
Australian schools are becoming more segregated. This threatens student outcomes

The primary issue with this approach is that while there might be some evidence to tell us a reform works “somewhere”, proponents often take this to mean it will work everywhere.

This can produce a range of adverse impacts. For one, privileging evidence that can apparently be applied across the board can devalue local and context-specific knowledge and evidence.

While it might be broadly useful to consider what “high impact teaching strategies” look like, we should never assume such evidence can be equally applied in all schools.

After all, what works best in a remote public school in Broome is highly unlikely to be the same as what works best in an elite private school in Darlinghurst.

Without critical and nuanced engagement with evidence claims, such lists and toolkits can act as powerful disincentives for the profession to generate and share locally-produced evidence. This, in turn, can lead to an erasure of evidence that does not align with dominant knowledge.

At its worst, when evidence is determined through top-down government intervention and based on global knowledge curated by leading think tanks, education businesses and organisations like the OECD, educators are relegated to being mere “implementers” of ideas from elsewhere.

At work here is an arrogance of design and a privileging of the perspectives of remote designers over that of professionals with deep knowledge of the local spaces in which they work.

What is a better way forward?

Australian schooling policy is being put together backwards.

My book outlines ways to reverse the reform script. Let me briefly mention three.

First, Australia needs to stop listening to the loud voices of education gurus and members of the global “consultocracy” who claim to have “the answer”.

Instead, we should invest energy and resources to inspire local networks of evidence creation and knowledge sharing. This organic and bottom-up approach puts faith in the profession to experiment, solve problems and collaborate to create solutions in context.

This is not an argument against experts and expertise but is a call for re-framing how we understand these terms.

Australia has fallen into a pattern where the experts and expertise that shape reforms are no longer in schools. This needs to be urgently re-balanced.

Read more:
How has education policy changed under the Coalition government?

Second, we need to move beyond industrial modes of thinking that liken the work of educators to those of factory workers on a production line.

Rather than investing millions in reforms that tie educators to lockstep standards and lists of strategies, we need to recognise that schools are complex and diverse social ecologies and the work of educators is non-routine based and always evolving.

So, while it can be useful to have some external evidence and standards to inform practices, its relevance to practical and local knowledge is only partial at best.

We only really know evidence works when we see it work in specific classrooms, and what works in one class won’t work in all classes.

Third, we need to move beyond the damaging assumption that sameness and commonality across systems and schools is the path to improvement.

Grand designs to revolutionise and homogenise practices are not the panacea.

Rather than approaching education reform as technicians seeking to make “the machine” work better, perhaps we should think and act more like gardeners, seeking to build the ecosystems needed for diverse things to grow and flourish.

Glenn C. Savage receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Want to improve our education system? Stop seeking advice from far-off gurus and encourage expertise in schools – https://theconversation.com/want-to-improve-our-education-system-stop-seeking-advice-from-far-off-gurus-and-encourage-expertise-in-schools-165320

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Sarvasy, Research Fellow in Linguistics, Western Sydney University

36-year-old Binoora Bhultse lives in Garda village in the Oyda district of southwest Ethiopia.

While he could share the name Binoora with other local men, Binoora also has a name that is special to him. It may never have existed before him, and may never name anyone else after he dies.

This name isn’t a word. It is a two-second wordless melody, given to Binoora in early childhood and recognised throughout his community to refer to him alone.

Binoora’s moyzé, or “name tune,” is most often whistled, using one hand at the mouth and the other opening and closing against that one to modulate the pitch.

It can also be sung to a series of non-meaningful sounds different for each name tune. For Binoora, this sequence is “tuutelmutelmtéetmtéel”.

Any other Binooras in the community will have their own unique moyzé, and so do most of the other 45,000 Oyda people.

None of the communities surrounding the Oyda are known to practice anything similar — in fact, name tunes are unknown in most of the world.

But, in one small region of Madang Province in northeastern Papua New Guinea, about 15,000 people across three language areas (Nankina, Domung and Yopno) also employ name tunes, which they call konggap.

Unique melodies label people

Yopno konggap differ in performance style from the Oyda moyzé, since they are either simply whistled with no use of the hands, or sung on a series of open vowels (like “a-o-a-o-e-e-a”).

But in many other respects, as our new research shows, konggap and moyzé are strikingly similar. Both moyzé and konggap are unique to every individual, and generally bear no relation to a person’s given name, which is often shared with other community members.

The tunes in both traditions use similar pitch ranges and last 1-4 seconds. Moyzé and konggap are also used for similar purposes. Both are used on a daily basis to hail and summon people, especially across long distances. They are also used to mourn the dead. Funeral laments in both communities involve performing the name tunes of the deceased and their relatives.

The traditions do differ in some ways. A moyzé can be inherited by a family member after death: given to children or grandchildren who do not yet have a moyzé, or inherited by adults who then abandon their own moyzé. Konggap are not inherited.

Konggap feature in a striking performance that has no moyzé equivalent: on special occasions a group of men dance while each sings his own konggap simultaneously, producing a remarkable polyphony of distinct name tunes.

Talking through music

Many communities use melodies for messaging.

“Whistled speech” is used in rural areas of the Canary Islands, Mexico, Turkey and elsewhere. These whistled messages mimic the cadences of actual speech to communicate across long distances: certain pitch levels relate to certain sounds, or accented syllables, in the corresponding spoken language.

Another type of “surrogate speech” can involve a small set of drum patterns to convey a fixed set of messages across long distances, as found in other parts of Africa and Papua New Guinea.

But name tunes are different from whistled messaging and meaningful drum patterns. They do not appear to mimic the cadences of speech, and, rather than drawing on a fixed number of messages, name tunes employ a potentially infinite number of musical patterns to uniquely identify people.

In that respect, konggap and moyzé reveal the possibilities for human creativity, and our capacity to recognise and reproduce distinct musical sequences. Each member of these communities must know and be able to accurately reproduce hundreds of unique name tunes. And every new generation entails the creation of myriad new name tunes, which must then be learned by others.

The name tune keeps ringing

We still don’t know why name tunes arose in these two far-flung communities.

Mountainous topography is said to be a factor in the development of many musical messaging systems, as music may carry farther than speech in such environments. Both the Oyda and Yopno live in mountainous terrain, but since neighbouring communities living in similar terrain appear to lack name tunes, this can only be part of the answer.

Other long-distance communication systems — such as slit-gong drum messaging in other parts of Papua New Guinea — have fallen out of use with the advent of, first, letter-writing, and later, mobile phones.

Name tunes appear to be robust in the face of technological change. Although there is some attrition in moyzé use among Oyda with white-collar jobs, at least one young Oyda man uses his deceased father’s moyzé — which he inherited — as a ringtone on his mobile phone.

Hannah Sarvasy receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Azeb Amha has received funding from Volkswagen Foundation under its Documentation of Endangered Languages (DoBeS) programme.

James Slotta has received funding from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the US Department of Education.

– ref. If you were called by a melody, how would it sound? Communities in Ethiopia and PNG name people with unique individual tunes – https://theconversation.com/if-you-were-called-by-a-melody-how-would-it-sound-communities-in-ethiopia-and-png-name-people-with-unique-individual-tunes-165969

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabriele Suder, Professor. Dean, New Business Acceleration, Federation University Australia

With Chancellor Angela Merkel departing as one of the most significant politicians in a generation, the German elections of September 26 will be very closely watched. This is the first time since 2005 that national elections will take place without her.

This first female German chancellor has served a record four terms in government. While she has her critics, she has overall been a source of stability, coherence and consultation. She has also become a role model of how to deal with controversy and crisis.

Standing down on her own terms

Merkel is now dedicated to making space for the future generation as Germany, the EU and the world face accelerating challenges. These range from the pandemic and climate change, relations with the US, Russia, China, and beyond. The geo-political and geo-strategic landscape is shifting. Merkel played a crucial role in pursuing EU-style multilateralism as a vector of peace and stability.

Some believe Merkel missed some important opportunities that can now be picked up or reinforced. Among those are bringing other European Union nations, such as France, even closer to taking on more EU leadership, an ambition strengthened when French President Emmanuel Macron was elected. Macron, the fourth French president elected during Merkel’s time as chancellor, was seen as liberal, pro-European and reformist. But his ideas on financial integration and a multi-speed model for Europe did not meet the expected enthusiasm, including in Germany, while he was struggling with reforms internally.

In her 16 years as leader, Merkel has seen many international counterparts come and go. She has worked with eight Japanese prime ministers, seven Italian prime ministers, five UK prime ministers, and four US presidents – not to mention six changes of prime minister in Australia.

Many leaders dramatically underestimated her, judging wrongly from her early nickname of “das Mädchen” (the girl) that she might be a political neophyte. She soom proved to be a role model for reliability and responsibility, and the impact of female leadership.

Read more:
Auf Wiedersehen, ‘Mutti’: How Angela Merkel’s centrist politics shaped Germany and Europe

Merkel’s place in history

Merkel is the first German chancellor to stand down on her own terms and timeline without the political pressures known by her predecessors. Importantly, she also does not have an obvious successor. This makes this election less than predictable. Neither the centre-right’s (CDU) Armin Laschet – Merkel’s party colleague – nor the centre-left’s (SPD) Olaf Scholz (currently finance minister), nor the Green Party’s Annalena Baerbock are seen as charismatic or convincing.

This leads to the question where the “Merkel voters” will head with their votes. During her tenure, women voters, economic centrists and ethnic minority voters in particular voted for her party in support of her, rather than for the CDU’s policies.

This also raises the question of what legacy she will leave.

Some have called Merkel one of the most influential world leaders of the modern era. Others recognise her as extraordinary in various ways, at times with critique.

Merkel has modernised Germany and, to some extent, liberalised a very conservative system, always with Germany’s economic interests at its centre. She became known to leverage Germany’s strong post-second world war values-driven perspective (very much embedded in the promise that history should never repeat itself). In doing so, she advanced and modernised the values of democracy, human rights, equality, diversity and the value of partner-level engagement to solve challenges and find solutions, together.

Merkel’s place in history is also symbolic. Raised in East Germany during the period it was split from the West and aligned to the Soviet regime, she entered politics during the era of reunification. Untarnished by the East’s past, she is a highly educated, humble woman with a doctorate in quantum chemistry who made it through a career marked by a range of roles. As she has also revealed she has not been thwarted by misogyny in politics or life in general.

She became chancellor at a time when Germany struggled to find cohesion between the former east and west. She brought same sex marriage, and radical policy shifts such as on nuclear policy after the Fukushima disaster. She has advanced a very environmentally conscious society to move toward a carbon-neutral economy, with Germany aiming to be carbon neutral by 2045 (the EU target is 2050). Her welcoming “we can do this” attitude to refugees and asylum seekers was noted around the world.

Under Merkel, Germany wielded the strongest political influence in the EU, though it took this role rather reluctantly, becoming its leading integrating force and its leading economy.

Symmetry and strength

Merkel’s leadership has not been without its hiccups, such as when saving the Euro currency during the Euro-crisis and Global Financial Crisis. Merkel brokered deals during endless discussion to keep Greece in the EU and maintain European solidarity.

She also played a key role in negotiating a stable transition through Brexit. There were times when she pushed through ideas that contradicted the general consensus on an issue within Germany and among her voters, such as in her moderate stance on China.

But one of the ways she will be remembered is for standing tall when her values were challenged. The most notable example of this is her decision to keep open Germany’s borders to refugees, after much consideration. This depth of thought brought the term merkeln into the German language, expressing long reflective periods in decision-making. It also brought her the nickname “Mutti” (mother) to reflect her caring, empathetic and decisive approach.

Read more:
How Angela Merkel has become – and remains – one of the world’s most successful political leaders

She has often been criticised in Germany for leading without communicating a larger vision. But her ability to learn and thrive during challenges while maintaining integrity, stability and responsible engagement shapes her legacy in Germany and beyond.

Merkel has been much praised, especially internationally, for her broader crisis management and her outstanding ability to maintain engagement. It is this legacy, combined with the ongoing importance of European and international collaboration, that remains front of mind for German voters as they elect their next leader.

Gabriele Suder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. From ‘Mädchen’ to ‘Mutti’: as Angela Merkel departs, she leaves a great legacy of leadership – https://theconversation.com/from-madchen-to-mutti-as-angela-merkel-departs-she-leaves-a-great-legacy-of-leadership-168187

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milan Andrejević, PhD Candidate in Psychology, The University of Melbourne

Disputes over fairness can create conflict. Families squabble over inheritances, societies polarise around the question of how to distribute wealth fairly, and nations become mired in territorial quarrels.

Many of these disputes stem from different perspectives people have on fairness. In new research, we found people’s ideas about fairness may stem from their personality traits.

No universal rule for sharing

Many disputes over fairness stem from the fact there isn’t a single universal moral solution to sharing a resource. Instead, there are several commonly used and widely acceptable moral stances, or norms.

Consider dividing an inheritance among siblings. Under the “norm of equality”, the inheritance should be split equally among them, regardless of any other information.

By the “equity norm”, however, a sibling in dire economic need should receive a larger share. By the “indirect reciprocity norm”, a sibling who has done more to take care of their parents while they were ill deserves a greater portion of the inheritance.

Individuals may disagree in good faith about which of these norms should guide the division of the inheritance.

More than selfishness

Previous research has shown that, in situations where multiple norms can be applied, individuals gravitate toward norms that best serve their economic interests.

But is this the whole story? Do people just select norms to serve their momentary interest? Or might they also have stable preferences for particular norms, even when they have no personal stake?

Read more:
What do children think of economic inequality? We did an experiment to find out

In our work at the Decision Neuroscience Lab at the University of Melbourne, we shed light on these issues in two new studies. In the first, we developed a new way to measure the relative importance individuals give to different fairness norms. In the second, we related these measures to personality traits.

The ten-dollar question

To measure the importance individuals assign to different norms, we asked participants to make moral judgements of how people chose to share $10 in a simple game. Our participants rated different sharing behaviours on a scale from “morally good” to “morally bad”.

The participants showed prominent differences in how they judged different sharing behaviours. Most participants judged even-handed sharing (dividing the $10 equally) as more moral than more generous sharing (giving away more than they kept), but some did the opposite.

Some participants were quite harsh in their judgements of low sharing (such as keeping $9 and giving only $1 to one’s partner), whereas others were more accepting of such behaviours.

To describe these differences, we mathematically derived a set of scores for each individual, where each score reflected the importance they place on a different fairness norm.

Why should personality matter?

Personality traits describe characteristics of individuals that are relatively stable over time, and also persist across situations. In our research, we looked at the set of personality traits described by the Big Five framework which include: extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and negative emotionality.

Read more:
Psychology by numbers: a brief history of personality tests

In some situations, most individuals behave in a similar way regardless of their personality. Almost everyone is likely to agree it is morally wrong to murder an innocent person.

In other situations, there will be individual differences in behaviour that do not systematically relate to personality differences. Residents of an apartment building will reliably press different buttons in the lift, but each person’s choice is determined by where they live.

However, many situations produce individual differences in behaviour that reveal people’s personalities — such as how they respond differently to stress, good news, a major life change, and so on. So, why might judging the behaviour of others be one of these situations?

First, there are robust individual differences in the importance people assign to fairness norms in moral judgements. Second, previous research has demonstrated that agreeableness in particular predicts adherence to fairness norms in several sharing situations.

Agreeableness is thought to capture kindness, politeness and compassion when dealing with others. How agreeableness is connected to fairness-related moral judgements of other people has not been studied before.

One might expect a kind, polite and compassionate person to be more forgiving and tolerant when judging others. On the other hand, agreeableness predicts higher adherence to fairness norms, so perhaps a polite and compassionate person would be highly sensitive to perceived unfairness, and thus judge the perpetrator of the unfairness more harshly. We hypothesised the latter to be the case.

How do personality traits relate to importance people assign to fairness norms?

For our second study, we measured agreeableness alongside other personality traits (including extraversion, conscientiousness, negative emotionality, and openness) using a reliable and well-validated questionnaire. We then examined associations these personality traits had with moral judgements in our sharing game.

Our findings supported the idea that agreeable individuals would judge abuses of fairness norms more harshly – and provided no support for the idea that agreeable people would be forgiving and tolerant when judging others that abuse fairness norms. Agreeable people may still be more forgiving when they are affected by norm abuses themselves, but do not seem to be forgiving on other people’s behalf.

We found people who scored highly on the traits of conscientiousness, openness and extraversion also made harsher judgements. These findings were somewhat surprising to us, so we recommend future studies to further investigate why this is the case.

Do conscientious people have a stricter understanding of fairness norms, or are they more diligent when rating the behaviour of others? Are extraverts more sensitive to abuse of some moral norms because they are more sensitive to social rewards and punishments than introverts? Do highly open people have a more confident understanding of moral situations? Further research is needed to get to the bottom of these questions.

More tolerance for moral plurality

What do these findings mean for conflicts around fairness that we encounter in our everyday lives? At least some of these conflicts likely occur because of differences in the importance individuals assign to different fairness norms.

Revealing these differences cannot settle disputes, but it may help us better understand moral plurality, and have a more tolerant approach to differences in perspective when negotiating fairness in our everyday lives.

Read more:
Coronavirus and you: how your personality affects how you cope and what you can do about it

The research described in this article was supported by an Australian Research Council grant (ARC DP160103353) to Stefan Bode.

Daniel Feuerriegel and Luke Smillie do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Personality traits may drive our ideas about fairness and sharing – https://theconversation.com/personality-traits-may-drive-our-ideas-about-fairness-and-sharing-168194

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shazia Sadiq, Professor, The University of Queensland

Digital technologies are now at the heart of our everyday lives, as anyone who has swapped their office for a videoconferencing screen, or downloaded a contact-tracing app, knows only too well.

This trend is set to continue even in a post-COVID world. Australia is at a crossroads in developing a strong digital economy to meet this changing world head-on.

In the words of the computing pioneer Alan Kay, “the best way to predict the future is to create it”. Australia too needs to grab the opportunity to leverage its research and development strengths in emerging digital technologies, and create a “digital future” by amplifying the opportunities for growth in this important sector and strengthen our sovereign capabilities. But Australia is lagging behind many other nations in shaping this digital future.

In a new report released today, the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering have jointly issued an urgent call to action, asking the government and industry to recognise the importance of emerging digital technologies.

The report makes several key recommendations:

1. elevate emerging digital technologies as a national science and innovation priority
2. include research and innovation in emerging digital technologies in the 2021 Research Infrastructure Roadmap
3. recognise emerging digital technologies as an independent growth sector.

What technologies should be encouraged?

The report focuses on emerging digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), augmented and virtual reality, blockchain and 5G networks.

These innovations are already starting to transform industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, waste management, transport, finance, education and health. But they are still considered “emerging technologies” because they have not yet realised their full commercial potential, unlike more established technologies such as 3D printing, mobile computing or GPS.

The next wave of emerging digital technologies, such as self-driving vehicles, smart microgrids, 6G networks and quantum computing, will further disrupt and transform many sectors of the economy.

Of course, it is hard to predict exactly what innovations will arise in the future. But by ensuring a strong national focus on fundamental science and engineering in this fast-evolving area, Australia can ensure it stays ahead of the curve, no matter what the future brings.

What are other nations doing?

The problem is that Australia is currently doing the opposite. It is falling behind countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada and China, all of which are prioritising digital technologies as a strategy to bolster their global competitiveness.

Digital innovation accounts for only 7.4% of Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP), compared with an OECD average of 11.2%.

Read more:
Australia’s digital competitiveness is slipping. Here’s how we can catch up

The applications of emerging digital technologies will continue to diversify and grow. Research and innovation in emerging digital technologies should not be artificially bound to specific application areas nor overly focus on today’s needs, as doing so limits innovation potential that could otherwise create entirely new industries and jobs.

At the same time, emerging digital technologies continue to outpace social expectations and regulatory frameworks. Australia’s digital divide continues to widen, and individuals with lower income, employment and education continue to fall behind. This challenge is likely to compound our looming shortage of digitally skilled workers and widen existing inequalities.

Achieving digital literacy and inclusion through education and workforce development are essential for Australia to meet its commitments to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and to ensure the development of a digitally literate, highly skilled workforce.

Australians are early adopters and avid users of technology — a trend that has been accelerated by the COVID pandemic. And the federal government’s Digital Economy Strategy is already putting A$1.2 billion into key digital capabilities such as artificial intelligence and drone technologies.

This investment is welcome, but the government must also clearly recognise the importance of building scientific and engineering capabilities in ways that underpin the entire digital economy, not just particular technologies.

Read more:
Upgrades for myGov and My Health Record sites in budget’s $1.2 billion digital strategy

Elevating emerging digital technologies as a national science priority will lift their importance, both in investment and in narrative, develop research and development strengths, deliver critical research infrastructure, and be a catalyst for creating new tech businesses and supporting existing businesses through enhanced linkages between research and industry. Through recognition of a growth sector, it can help to attract talent and address future skill needs of the nation.

A highly digitised society will demand world-class leadership in developing digital technologies, and reduce our reliance on overseas technology and expertise. Coordinated and strategic support of this crucial sector of our economy will help create a digital future for Australia that is aligned with our social and economic aspirations.

Shazia Sadiq receives funding from the Australian Research Council, as well as other funding schemes of the Australian government and industry. She is the chair of the National Committee for Information and Communication Sciences at the Australian Academy of Science, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. Shazia is also the director of the ARC Training Centre for Information Resilience (CIRES.org.au), which has a number of industry and government partners.

Thas Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Defence Science and Technology Group, and industry partners such as InstaWireless and Jarvis. He has received funding in the past from partners such as Google, Nokia Networks, Transurban, Digital Falcon, and the Victorian State Government.

This article is based on his role as the co-chair of the National Committee for the Information and Communication Sciences of the Australian Academy of Science and it reflects contributions from the other committee members of the commitee and Digital Futures committee members of the Australian Technological and Engineering Sciences (Professor Shazia Sadiq
Professor Rod Tucker,
Professor Benjamin Rubinstein, Professor Svetha Venkatesh,
Professor Andy Koronios,
Professor Deborah Bunker,
Professor Iain Collings,
Professor Mike Miller Professor Mary-Anne Williams
Mr David Thodey,
Dr Craig Mudge, Professor Glenn Wightwick)

– ref. Digital tech is the future, but a new report shows Australia risks being left in the past – https://theconversation.com/digital-tech-is-the-future-but-a-new-report-shows-australia-risks-being-left-in-the-past-168250

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Scanlon, Senior Lecturer in Communication, Deakin University

Which federal MP spends the most on Facebook advertising?

If you guessed Prime Minister Scott Morrison or Labor leader Anthony Albanese — or even headline-grabbing backbenchers Craig Kelly or Andrew Laming — you would be wrong. Way off, in fact.

No, the biggest spender on Facebook advertising — for the 90 day period between 20 June to 17 September 2021 — was deputy Labor leader, Richard Marles.

As recent scandals around the 2016 US presidential elections and the Brexit vote show, knowing how those in the political sphere spend their advertising dollars is key to maintaining trust and integrity in our political system. This has never been more important in an age where political messages can be targeted to particular audiences with laser-like precision.

Facebook’s Ad Library

I got the data for my study from Facebook’s Ad Library, a publicly accessible database of ads which are served up across Facebook, the Facebook-owned Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Facebook’s Audience Network, which is used to run ads within games and apps beyond Facebook’s platforms. The database is searchable by advertiser, location and keywords and can be filtered for issues, elections or politics.

Unless you specify otherwise, Facebook ads are automatically placed wherever its algorithm “decides” they should be placed.

Facebook launched its ad library in 2019. This came in the wake the 2016 US presidential election where the social network’s advertisements were used to influence the outcome.

Read more:
Fact check US: What is the impact of Russian interference in the US presidential election?

The ad library launched in Australia in March 2020.

By making ads on Facebook’s platforms, particularly those relating to elections and politics, accessible, the social media giant is attempting to improve transparency about who spends how much and on what issues.

Hey, big spender

My data analysis reveals Marles spent A$45,056 advertising on the social media site in the three months to 17 September 2021.

That’s more than double the next highest lower house MP advertising on Facebook, assistant defence minister Andrew Hastie. He spent $17,251 over the same period.

The adverts run by Marles focused on campaigning against proposed changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, campaigning against Geelong mayor and local Liberal candidate Stephanie Asher, and advocating for a federal anti-corruption commission.

Morrison doesn’t even rank in the top ten Facebook advertisers in federal parliament, coming in at number 15, while Albanese is ranked 12th. Perhaps the leaders’ relatively low ranking is not surprising. If you are a leader, you have a greater platform to get your message out without having to spend up big on Facebook ads.

It’s impossible to say exactly what you get for this money, as your ads are effectively bidding against other advertisers seeking the same audience. The cost per 1,000 impressions varies constantly. During an election campaign, the costs is likely to go higher, but still be much cheaper than traditional newspaper and TV advertising.

What about senators and premiers?

The data for the past three months shows MPs in the House of Representatives are bigger spenders than their Senate colleagues.

In the upper house, the biggest spenders on Facebook ads over the past three months were Liberal senators Zed Seselja and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who spent $18,280 and $17,192 respectively. Labor senator Kristina Keneally was the third highest ad spender, dropping $16,667 on Facebook ads.

And the state premiers? Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews spent $13,897, well behind his South Australian counterpart Steven Marshall, who spent $34,471.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian does not come up in the Facebook Ad Library, suggesting her Facebook page is not used to buy advertisements on the platform.

What information can you get?

When you search the ad library, users can see summaries about how much was spent, where it was spent and the ad copy and images that were displayed to Facebook users. Facebook also gives an indication of the potential reach of each ad and the number of screens it appeared on.

Marles’ adverts, for example, reached a potential audience of 100,000–500,000 people. In practice, though, his best-performing ad in the past three months was seen by 20,000–25,000 people, while his poorest performing ad was seen by 1,000–2,000.

You can can also search and view advertisements by political parties and organisations.

Here, the ALP dominates, spending $173,067 over the past three months, in comparison to the Liberal Party, which spent $23,167. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation comes in third, with a Facebook ad spend of $10,118.

The spending by political parties is modest compared to some non-governmental organisations. For example, Greenpeace Australia Pacific spent $327,117, ahead of Amnesty International Australia ($255,052) and the Australian Conservation Foundation ($253,260).

How the ad library could be better

Will Facebook’s steps toward improving transparency in public discussion and debate improve matters?

Perhaps, but at the moment it’s not the easiest tool to use, especially for the average user. To find out who spent the most among federal MPs requires entering the names manually. For a company that is otherwise obsessed about the user experience, the design of the ad library seems an afterthought.

And while you can create a link to the data, it doesn’t appear to update in real-time. The results are a snapshot of ad spend, frozen in time. This means the data is always slightly behind and users are required to enter the data anew to create a more up-to-date comparison. Facebook does have the capacity to provide real-time access to precise numbers if they so wished.

A bigger problem is Facebook’s system relies on individuals and organisations to self-report if an advertisement is related to social or political issues. This is required by Australian law, but those seeking to affect the outcome of election may just take the chance of avoiding such scrutiny.

For example, last October, Clive Palmer ran an ad about border closures titled “Down with the wall!!!” without a disclaimer. It was eventually removed by Facebook, but not before it had been served up in 10,000–15,000 Facebook feeds.

Read more:
After Clive Palmer’s $60 million campaign, limits on political advertising are more important than ever

Nevertheless, Facebook’s efforts to improve transparency around ad spending and reach is arguably more open and democratic than traditional advertising. Marles’ and other advertisers’ ad spends might raise eyebrows, but at the very least they’re being upfront about what they’re spending.

Perhaps it’s time we insisted all social and political advertising, both online and off, achieved similar levels of transparency.

I currently purchase Facebook ads to promote books I have co-authored.

– ref. Which federal MP is spending the most on Facebook advertising? (Hint: it is not Craig Kelly) – https://theconversation.com/which-federal-mp-is-spending-the-most-on-facebook-advertising-hint-it-is-not-craig-kelly-168197

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Bennett Chair of Autism, Telethon Kids Institute, The University of Western Australia

A therapy for infants showing early signs of autism reduces the chance of the child meeting diagnostic criteria for autism at three years of age. That’s according to our new research, published today in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Therapy for children with autism often begins after receiving a diagnosis, which usually doesn’t occur until after the child turns two.

Our findings suggest starting therapy during the first year of life, when the brain and mind are developing rapidly, may provide even greater benefits.

Infants who received the therapy at 12 months of age were re-assessed at age three. They had fewer behaviours of autism, such as social communication difficulties and repetitive behaviours, compared to infants who didn’t receive the therapy.

Infants who received the therapy were also less likely to meet criteria for an overall diagnosis of autism when they were three.

Autism diagnosis

Like all neurodevelopmental conditions, autism is diagnosed using “deficit-focused” diagnostic criteria. In other words, children are assessed on what they can’t do.

The Diagnostics and Statistical Manual is the authoritative guide describing the behaviours we use to diagnose neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. It specifies individuals must have “persistent deficits” in social communication and behavioural interaction to receive a diagnosis of autism spectrum.

Read more:
What causes autism? What we know, don’t know and suspect

Significantly more children are now recognised as having difficulties learning social communication skills than previously. This has led to an increase in the numbers of children being diagnosed with autism – now estimated to be 2% of the population.

These social and communication difficulties, restricted behavioural repertoire and sensory issues, can present significant barriers to relationships, education and employment as they mature. So reducing these challenges can be important to helping individuals thrive into adulthood.

The aim of the therapy we trialled in our study was to help support social communication skills early in life, with the aim of reducing these long-term barriers.

The therapy

The therapy, called iBASIS-VIPP, was based on the Video Interaction for Positive Parenting (VIPP) program. This program was adapted by our colleagues in the United Kingdom to specifically support social communication development.

The therapy is parent-led, which means parents and caregivers, who are the most prominent and important people in their babies’ lives, are trained to deliver it.

iBASIS-VIPP uses video-feedback to help parents recognise their baby’s communication cues so they can respond in a way that builds their social communication development.

Parents are videoed interacting with their baby in everyday situations, such as feeding and playing. The trained therapist then provides guidance to the parent about how their baby is communicating with them, and they can communicate back to have back-and-forth conversations.

We know these back-and-forth conversations are crucial to support early social communication development, and are a precursor to more complex skills, such as verbal language.

Importantly, parent-infant interactions are in no way the “cause” of autism. Infants are born with developmental vulnerabilities, which other studies tell us are likely of genetic origin.

Read more:
It’s 25 years since we redefined autism – here’s what we’ve learnt

This therapy focuses on supporting parent-child interactions as a way of enriching their social environment, creating learning opportunities for the child. And this is tailored to the child’s unique abilities.

The therapy takes the approach that children who develop differently experience the world and learn skills in different ways. By understanding unique abilities and interests of each baby, we can use these strengths as a foundation for future development.

What we found

In our study, we identified 103 infants in Perth and Melbourne who were showing early behavioural signs of autism, such as reduced eye contact, imitation or social smiling.

Fifty of the infants were randomised to receive the iBASIS-VIPP therapy for five months. The other 53 infants received the usual services they would receive in their local community, such as allied health therapy, working with psychologists, speech pathologists and occupational therapists.

The babies then received developmental assessments at around 18 months of age, two years, and three years.

When the babies were aged three, independent clinicians who did not know which therapies the children had received, reviewed all of the developmental information collected. And they determined whether the children met diagnostic criteria for autism.

The iBASIS-VIPP therapy was so effective in supporting children to learn social communication skills that only 6.7% of the children met diagnostic criteria for autism at age three years, compared to 20.5% of children who did not receive the therapy. That’s a reduction of two-thirds.

While most children in the study still had some level of developmental difficulties, the therapy supported the development of social communication skills. This meant they no longer met the criteria for a diagnosis.

The iBASIS-VIPP therapy led to increased parental responsiveness to their child’s unique communication. It also improved parent-reported language development, compared to the control group.

This is the first time a “pre-emptive” therapy – that is, a therapy provided before diagnosis – has shown an effect on autism diagnostic outcomes.

Read more:
We examined the research evidence on 111 autism early intervention approaches. Here’s what we found

What do the findings mean?

This therapy represents a new way of providing support to infants showing early developmental difficulties.

Many therapies for autism try to improve development by working with children directly to shape more “typical” behaviours.

By contrast, this therapy does not work with the child directly but with the social environment around the child. It adapts to each child’s unique differences, and helps them learn in a way that is best for them.

By doing so, this therapy was able to support social communication skills and behavioural expression to the point that infants were less likely to meet the “deficit-focused” diagnostic criteria for autism.

This finding provides strong evidence for a new model of how we provide clinical support to children with developmental differences.

Rather than waiting until a diagnosis to start therapy – typically at two years of age at the earliest – we need to identify developmental differences as early as possible. Then we need to provide developmental supports that nurture each child’s strengths.

At its most basic, this is a change of clinical support from “wait and see” to “identify and act”.

Read more:
Treating suspected autism at 12 months of age improves children’s language skills

The finding also emphasises the importance of providing supports to children based on functional difficulties, rather than the presence or absence of a diagnosis. This approach is consistent with Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme.

By understanding who a child is (their strengths and challenges) rather than what they are (a diagnostic label), we can provide individualised therapy supports that will help them towards their full potential.

Andrew Whitehouse receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, the Autism Cooperative Research Centre, the Angela Wright Bennett Foundation, the McCusker Charitable Foundation and JVCKENWOOD Corporation.

Jonathan Green receives funding from the UK Medical Research Council, the UK National Institute for Health Research and the Telethon-Perth Children’s Hospital Research Fund. He is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Manchester and Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre. Hon Consultant, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, and NIHR Senior Investigator. The views expressed are his and do not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Kristelle Hudry works for La Trobe University. She has received funding from two La Trobe University Research Focus Areas (Understanding Disease, Building Health Communities), the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (AutismCRC), the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS), the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), and JVCKENWOOD Corporation. She receives consultancy fees for training on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and for her Associate Editor role with Research in Developmental Disabilities (RIDD).

– ref. Therapy for babies showing early signs of autism reduces the chance of clinical diagnosis at age 3 – https://theconversation.com/therapy-for-babies-showing-early-signs-of-autism-reduces-the-chance-of-clinical-diagnosis-at-age-3-167146

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Croucher, Professor and Head of School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing, Massey University

After five weeks in the strictest lockdown, Auckland will move to level 3 restrictions from midnight on Tuesday, for at least two weeks.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the decision was based on low community spread and an accelerated vaccination rollout. A targeted vaccination campaign will now focus on about 23,000 people in Auckland who are older than 65 but have not yet received their first dose.

GPs and pharmacies are offering vaccinations, walk-in or drive-through vaccination centres have been set up, and mobile vaccination buses are delivering doses throughout Auckland.

According to the Ministry of Health, 37% of New Zealand’s eligible population are now fully vaccinated, while 72% have received their first dose. But as our new research shows, about 20% choose not to be vaccinated, often because they remain unsure about vaccine safety.

Barriers to vaccination uptake

While the vaccine rollout has been criticised for being sluggish, it picked up pace since the start of the outbreak in August.

But a significant number of people continue to say they are not likely to get the vaccine. A recent report commissioned by the Ministry of Health shows 71% of those unvaccinated at the time were intending to get vaccinated. In this group, 67% of Māori and 62% of Pacific respondents said they would get vaccinated.

But 20% of unvaccinated people said they were unlikely to have a vaccine, and of those, 11% would “definitely not” get vaccinated.

A similar study in July showed only four in five New Zealanders said they planned on getting vaccinated.

Read more:
Four in five New Zealanders plan to get vaccinated, but many people want more information about vaccine safety

Both studies point to numerous barriers to uptake, such as lack of exposure to the virus, misinformation about vaccination and lack of confidence in the vaccine. The main reasons for being unsure continue to be concerns about long-term effects, safety and waiting to see if others have side effects.

Our work, conducted between June and August 2021, examined two of these barriers: misunderstandings about the vaccine and confidence in the vaccine.

We found 76.2% of our participants identified as physically able to be vaccinated. The remainder (23.8%) identified as physically unable to receive a vaccine due to pre-existing medical conditions or philosophical views.

But of the latter group only 28.9% actually meet the criteria set by groups such as the Ministry of Health or the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The people in this group most often asserted they could not get the jab because they have asthma, want to get pregnant or their doctor or a religious leader told them they shouldn’t. This lack of understanding about who can get the vaccine is a challenge for the vaccination rollout and the government.

Vaccine confidence is key to uptake

As the rollout continues and the government pursues its elimination strategy, it must clearly address issues about who can and cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.

When asked if they would get the COVID-19 vaccine, 70.9% of those who said they are physically or medically unable to do so said they would eventually get it if they had to.

Of those who said they are able to get vaccinated, 76.9% said they would get the jab. Split by political affiliations, 42.5% of National, 66.4% of Labour, 49.5% of Green, 67.5% of Māori Party, 40.6% of “other” political party and 73.7% of non-affiliated voters said they would get vaccinated.

In terms of demographics, 65.2% of Pākehā, 57.7% of Māori, 33.5% of Pasifika and 72.4% of the “other” group (Indian/Asian) said they were likely to get vaccinated. These results for Pākehā, Māori and Pasifika are marginally lower than those reported in the Ministry of Health study.

The critical element to understanding the patterns in our research was vaccine confidence. We found significant differences in confidence in COVID-19 vaccines between ethnic groups in New Zealand. Pacific respondents had the lowest levels of confidence, while those who identified as “other” had the highest.

Māori and Pasifika communities are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. There is a growing anti-vax movement within some parts of the Pacific community, which Pacific leaders and communities are currently addressing.

Recent modelling has shown that unless New Zealand can get its vaccination rate up to 90% and above, the threat of large-scale outbreaks, mass hospitalisations and thousands of deaths is possible once borders reopen.

Read more:
At least four in five New Zealanders will have to be vaccinated before border controls can be fully relaxed

To improve our nation’s vaccine rollout, the government should expand messaging on who can and cannot get vaccinated. Further messaging about the safety of the vaccine must continue with Pacific communities.

While the government has discussed the safety of the Pfizer vaccine, it’s clearly not enough. Additional work must be done at the grass-roots level (community centres, churches) to demonstrate the safety and increase confidence in the vaccine.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. New Zealand has ramped up vaccination rates, but too many people remain concerned about vaccine safety – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-has-ramped-up-vaccination-rates-but-too-many-people-remain-concerned-about-vaccine-safety-167984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Helene Nolan, Postdoctoral research fellow, Western Sydney University

Green shoots emerging from black tree trunks is an iconic image in the days following bushfires, thanks to the remarkable ability of many native plants to survive even the most intense flames.

But in recent years, the length, frequency and intensity of Australian bushfire seasons have increased, and will worsen further under climate change. Droughts and heatwaves are also projected to increase, and climate change may also affect the incidence of pest insect outbreaks, although this is difficult to predict.

How will our ecosystems cope with this combination of threats? In our recently published paper, we looked to answer this exact question — and the news isn’t good.

We found while many plants are really good at withstanding certain types of fire, the combination of drought, heatwaves and pest insects may push many fire-adapted plants to the brink in the future. The devastating Black Summer fires gave us a taste of this future.

What happens when fires become more frequent?

Ash forests are one of the most iconic in Australia, home to some of the tallest flowering plants on Earth. When severe fire occurs in these forests, the mature trees are killed and the forest regenerates entirely from the seed that falls from the dead canopy.

These regrowing trees, however, do not produce seed reliably until they’re 15 years old. This means if fire occurs again during this period, the trees will not regenerate, and the ash forest will collapse.

This would have serious consequences for the carbon stored in these trees, and the habitat these forests provide for animals.

Southeast Australia has experienced multiple fires since 2003, which means there’s a large area of regrowing ash forests across the landscape, especially in Victoria.

The Black Summer bushfires burned parts of these young forests, and nearly 10,000 football fields of ash forest was at risk of collapse. Thankfully, approximately half of this area was recovered through an artificial seeding program.

What happens when fire seasons get longer?

Longer fire seasons means there’s a greater chance species will burn at a time of year that’s outside the historical norm. This can have devastating consequences for plant populations.

For example, out-of-season fires, such as in winter, can delay maturation of the Woronora beard-heath compared to summer fires, because of their seasonal requirements for releasing and germinating seeds. This means the species needs longer fire-free intervals when fires occur out of season.

Read more:
Entire hillsides of trees turned brown this summer. Is it the start of ecosystem collapse?

The iconic gymea lily, a post-fire flowering species, is another plant under similar threat. New research showed when fires occur outside summer, the gymea lily didn’t flower as much and changed its seed chemistry.

While this resprouting species might persist in the short term, consistent out-of-season fires could have long-term impacts by reducing its reproduction and, therefore, population size.

When drought and heatwaves get more severe

In the lead up to the Black Summer fires, eastern Australia experienced the hottest and driest year on record. The drought and associated heatwaves triggered widespread canopy die-off.

Extremes of drought and heat can directly kill plants. And this increase in dead vegetation may increase the intensity of fires.

Another problem is that by coping with drought and heat stress, plants may deplete their stored energy reserves, which are vital for resprouting new leaves following fire. Depletion of energy reserves may result in a phenomenon called “resprouting exhaustion syndrome”, where fire-adapted plants no longer have the reserves to regenerate new leaves after fire.

Therefore, fire can deliver the final blow to resprouting plants already suffering from drought and heat stress.

Drought and heatwaves could also be a big problem for seeds. Many species rely on fire-triggered seed germination to survive following fire, such as many species of wattles, banksias and some eucalypts.

But drought and heat stress may reduce the number of seeds that get released, because they limit flowering and seed development in the lead up to bushfires, or trigger plants to release seeds prematurely.

For example, in Australian fire-prone ecosystems, temperatures between 40℃ and 100℃ are required to break the dormancy of seeds stored in soil and trigger germination. But during heatwaves, soil temperatures can be high enough to break these temperature thresholds. This means seeds could be released before the fire, and they won’t be available to germinate after the fire hits.

Heatwaves can also reduce the quality of seeds by deforming their DNA. This could reduce the success of seed germination after fire.

What about insects? The growth of new foliage following fire or drought is tasty to insects. If pest insect outbreaks occur after fire, they may remove all the leaves of recovering plants. This additional stress may push plants over their limit, resulting in their death.

This phenomenon has more typically been obverved in eucalypts following drought, where repeated defoliation (leaf loss) by pest insects triggered dieback in recovering trees.

When threats pile up

We expect many vegetation communities will remain resilient in the short-term, including most eucalpyt species.

But even in these resilient forests, we expect to see some changes in the types of species present in certain areas and changes to the structure of vegetation (such as the size of trees).

As climate change progresses, many fire-prone ecosystems will be pushed beyond their historical limits. Our new research is only the beginning — how plants will respond is still highly uncertain, and more research is needed to untangle the interacting effects of fire, drought, heatwaves and pest insects.

We need to rapidly reduce carbon emissions before testing the limits of our ecosystems to recover from fire.

Read more:
5 remarkable stories of flora and fauna in the aftermath of Australia’s horror bushfire season

Rachael Nolan receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Rural Fire Service, ACT Parks and Conservation and the Hermon Slade Foundation. She is a member of the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, which is supported by funds from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.

Andrea Leigh receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with The University of Technology Sydney.

Mark Ooi receives funding from the ARC. and the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. He is a member of the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, which is supported by funds from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.

Ross Bradstock receives funding from the NSW Rural Fire Service and the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment via the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and the ARC.

Tim Curran receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), Fire and Emergency New Zealand, the Miss E L Hellaby Indigenous Grasslands Research Trust, Marlborough District Council, and the Lincoln University Argyle Fund. Tim is the President of the New Zealand Ecological Society.

Tom Fairman has received funding from Australian Research Council and has previously worked in forest management and research for the Victorian Government.

Víctor Resco de Dios receives funding from MICINN and Velux Fundation.

– ref. Climate change is testing the resilience of native plants to fire, from ash forests to gymea lilies – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-testing-the-resilience-of-native-plants-to-fire-from-ash-forests-to-gymea-lilies-167367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chen Zhao, Research associate, University of Tasmania

The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest mass of ice in the world, holding around 60% of the world’s fresh water. If it all melted, global average sea levels would rise by 58 metres. But scientists are grappling with exactly how global warming will affect this great ice sheet.

This knowledge gap was reflected in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It contains projections from models in which important processes affecting the ice sheets, known as feedbacks and tipping points, are absent because scientific understanding is lacking.

Projected sea level rise will have widespread effects in Australia and around the world. But current projections of ice sheet melt are so wide that developing ways for societies to adapt will be incredibly expensive and difficult.

If the world is to effectively adapt to sea level rise with minimal cost, we must quickly address the uncertainty surrounding Antarctica’s melting ice sheet. This requires significant investment in scientific capacity.

The great unknown

Ice loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets was the largest contributor to sea level rise in recent decades. Even if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, the heat already in the ocean and atmosphere would cause substantial ice loss and a corresponding rise in sea levels. But exactly how much, and how fast, remains unclear.

Scientific understanding of ice sheet processes, and of the variability of the forces that affect ice sheets, is incredibly limited. This is largely because much of the ice sheets are in very remote and harsh environments, and so difficult to access.

This lack of information is one of the main sources of uncertainty in the models used to estimate ice mass loss.

At the moment, quantifying how much the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise primarily involves an international scientific collaboration known as the “Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6”, or ISMIP6, of which we are part.

The project includes experts in ice sheet and climate modelling and observations. It produces computer simulations of what might happen if the polar regions melt under different climate scenarios, to improve projections of sea level rise.

The project also investigates ice sheet–climate feedbacks. In other words, it looks at how processes in the oceans and atmosphere will affect the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, including whether the changes might cause them to collapse – leading to large and sudden increases in sea level.

Read more:
Anatomy of a heatwave: how Antarctica recorded a 20.75°C day last month

Melting from below

Research has identified so-called “basal melt” as the most significant driver of Antarctic ice loss. Basal melt refers to the melting of ice shelves from underneath, and in the case of Antarctica, interactions with the ocean are thought to be the main cause. But gathering scientific observations beneath ice shelves is a major logistical challenge, leading to a dearth of data about this phenomenon.

This and other constraints mean the rate of progress in ice sheet modelling has been insufficient to date, and so active ice sheet models are not included in climate models.

Scientists must instead make projections using the ice sheet models in isolation. This hinders scientific attempts to accurately simulate the feedback between ice and climate.

For example, it creates much uncertainty in how the interaction between the ocean and the ice shelf will affect ice mass loss, and how the very cold, fresh meltwater will make its way back to global oceans and cause sea level rise, and potentially disrupt currents.

Despite the uncertainties ISMIP6 is dealing with, it has published a series of recent research including a key paper published in Nature in May. This found if the world met the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ this century, land ice melt would cause global sea level rise of about 13cm by 2100, in the most optimistic scenario. This is compared to a rise of 25cm under the world’s current emissions-reduction pledges.

The study also outlines a pessimistic, but still plausible, basal melt scenario for Antarctica in which sea levels could be five times higher than in the main scenarios.

The breadth of such findings underpinned sea level projections in the latest IPCC report. The Antarctic ice sheet once again represented the greatest source of uncertainty in these projections.

The below graph shows the IPCC’s latest sea level projections. The shaded area reflects the large uncertainties in models using the same basic data sets and approaches. The dotted line reflects deep uncertainty about tipping points and thresholds in ice sheet stability.

IPCC reports are intended to guide global policy-makers in coming years and decades. But the uncertainties about ice melt from Antarctica limit the usefulness of projections by the IPCC and others.

Read more:
This is the most sobering report card yet on climate change and Earth’s future. Here’s what you need to know

Dealing with uncertainty

Future sea level rise poses big challenges such as human displacement, infrastructure loss, interference with agriculture, a potential influx of climate refugees, and coastal habitat degradation.

It’s crucial that ice sheet models are improved, tested robustly against real-world observations, then integrated into the next generation of international climate models – including those being developed in Australia.

International collaborations such as NECKLACE and RISE are seeking to coordinate international effort between models and observations. Significant investment across these projects is needed.

Sea levels will continue rising in the coming decades and centuries. Ice sheet projections must be narrowed down to ensure current and future generations can adapt safely and efficiently.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi, Dr Rupert Gladstone, Dr Thomas Zwinger and David Reilly to the research from which this article draws.

Chen Zhao works under the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania. She receives grant funding from the Australian Government as part of the Antarctic Science Collaboration Initiative program (ASCI000002).

Rupert Gladstone receives grant funding from the Finnish Government as part of the Coupled Ocean and Land ice Dynamics (COLD) consortium (Academy of Finland grant number 322430).

– ref. Scientists still don’t know how far melting in Antarctica will go – or the sea level rise it will unleash – https://theconversation.com/scientists-still-dont-know-how-far-melting-in-antarctica-will-go-or-the-sea-level-rise-it-will-unleash-166677

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Davie, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National University

On June 25 1910, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird opened to acclaim at the Paris Opéra. The success propelled its composer, then aged 28, to international prominence, a position of influence he would retain for six decades.

The ballet’s myth-like storyline features a magical Firebird, who helps a young prince rescue a coterie of princesses from Kashchey, an evil sorcerer.

Based on the eponymous bird of Russian folklore, it has ultimately propagated some myths of its own – relating to the artistic ideals of the team who created it, and the narrative’s historical accuracy.

Most crucial, though, is the composer himself who, through successive elaborations of his own biography, engaged in myth-making on an extensive scale. Notable for what Stravinsky expert Richard Taruskin terms his “celebrated mendacity”, questions have lingered as to whether certain of the composer’s early musical ideas were as original as they seemed.

Conservative ‘modernists’

After The Firebird, Stravinsky’s early career was bolstered by the triumph of his next two works: Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Given the impact of the last work in particular, it is customary to note Stravinsky’s pivotal influence on the development of musical modernism.

Yet in 1910, he was a largely untested novice. The Firebird was a production of the Ballets Russes, newly formed by its director, the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. For over a decade, Diaghilev had been a leading member of a group known as “Mir iskusstva” (World of Art), the title of their short-lived magazine.

Their artistic ideals, however, were far from modern. A collection of conservatives, many were from aristocratic backgrounds with a tendency toward romantic nationalism. They were aligned against both the “realist” modernism of the previous generation, and the evolving spiritual modernism of fellow Russian composers like Scriabin. Their principles were those against which socialists would soon react.

In a series of ventures for Parisian audiences from 1906, Diaghilev looked to Russia’s past for his sources. After discovering how expensive opera was to produce, he settled exclusively on ballet from 1910. Again, however, his musical choices were initially conservative.

Repurposed myths

Magical birds are not without precedent in folklore, having featured in the childhood tales of many countries, such as Germany, where a similar creature appears in Grimm’s The Golden Bird.

Yet in Russia, the Firebird had a special significance, emerging as a nationalist symbol over the latter decades of the 19th century. Characterised as a bird of great beauty, it brought peril to those who tried to catch it or steal its glowing feathers.

In the Ballets Russes production, however, far from causing misfortune, when the young prince catches the Firebird it actually helps him.

Historians have noted the story is similar to lines from Russian poet Yakov Polonsky’s children’s poem, Winter Journey (1844). Yet the synopsis evidently is a conflation of two separate folk tales, developed by Mir iskusstva members as an export vehicle for foreign audiences.

Led by the choreographer Mikhail Fokine, the stories were repurposed by Alexandre Benois and Alexander Golovin, both important contributors to Ballets Russes design, and Nikolai Tcherepnin, the composer originally selected to write the Firebird’s music.

In short, the popular folk tale of Ivan-Tsarevich, and his quest for a beautiful princess (in which the Firebird features tangentially), was blended with a separate folk tale about the evil, immortal Kashchey, who dies at the hand of a prince who possesses a magical egg.

‘New’ music

Fokine, who by typical accounts was a difficult choreographer to work with, likely caused three composers to exit or decline the project. Hence, the fortuitous opening for Stravinsky, a student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the elder statesman of Russian music whose most progressive works were little known in the West.

According to Fokine’s autobiography, Stravinsky sat at the piano, improvising and accompanying as the choreographer first developed his ideas for the work. If this account is accurate, never again would the composer allow himself to appear so ancillary to the creative process.

The most noticeable element of Stravinsky’s score is the way harmonious, tonal music is given to the mortal characters – Ivan-Tsarevich and the princesses – while chromatic, non-tonal music underscores the supernatural others.

This clever device is, in fact, a Russian tradition. The source can be traced as far back as Mikhail Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842), where a strikingly non-tonal descending scale depicts the supernatural abduction of a bride from her traditional (and tonal) wedding feast.

Stravinsky, an observant student, had closely scrutinised the innovative, and increasingly non-tonal, musical works of Rimsky-Korsakov, where the device was also prevalent.

He elaborated on one of Rimsky’s theories to create what has been called a “ladder of thirds”. Analysis from recent decades by musicologist Taruskin, has detected this schematic underpinning large portions of The Firebird.

The weirdly alternating pattern of thirds generates the supernatural music of the introduction, the Firebird’s chromatic “swirls” and Kashchey’s motifs.

Most beautifully, it also provides the hushed musical transition from the underworld to the final tableau, where Ivan-Tsarevich and the princesses celebrate victory.

Yet for the mortal, tonal characters, Stravinsky, in places, incorporates folk melodies, another popular tradition among Russian composers.

Contrast Stravinsky’s setting of a folk-tune in the Khorovod of the Princesses from The Firebird, with Rimsky-Korsakov’s setting of the same melody in his Sinfonietta.

Stravinsky was always squeamish when questioned about his use of folk melodies, even flatly denying it. Yet as later analysis has shown, other works of this period, such as The Rite of Spring, feature them in abundance.

The influence of Rimsky-Korsakov can be noted in other ways, too, not least in his own opera about the very same Kashchey (1902), and his final opera, The Golden Cockerel (1908), also, tellingly, about a magical bird.

Indeed, if one wanted to really push the point, mention could be made passive of the notorious similarity of the Mt Triglav episode from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera-ballet Mlada to Stravinsky’s Danse infernal
in The Firebird where, in short, the plagiarism seems breathtaking.

The ‘hit’

But that would miss the most important point: for audiences in the West, The Firebird was a hit. These fantastical tales of Russia’s past were woven, almost accidentally it seems, with a musical work that on foreign soil appeared unexpectedly modern.

The belated development of Russian music had for a century remained relatively hidden to the rest of the world. And after a long gestation, it was Stravinsky who revealed many of its treasures.

It was as if a baton had passed from one generation to the next, through the smallest of steps. The real genius of Stravinsky is that he was to run so far with it, and so quickly.

Scott Davie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Decoding the music masterpieces: Stravinsky’s The Firebird – https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-stravinskys-the-firebird-161582

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury

The decision to move Auckland to alert level 3 from midnight on Tuesday is a calculated risk by the government. New daily cases in Auckland have stayed stubbornly high over the past week, a period when many of us had hoped to see them fall to single digits.

On a positive note, most of these new cases have been identified by contact tracing and many have been isolated before they tested positive, meaning they have had fewer chances to infect others.

On the other hand, a worrying few continue to test positive before being identified by contract tracers. Ideally we would like to see no more of these cases because they are much more likely to have been infectious in the community. We can’t be confident that the Delta outbreak is contained until these become few and far between.

This doesn’t mean level 4 has failed or that level 3 will. By the time this outbreak was detected on August 17, there were several hundred cases in the community. Level 4 put the brakes on that, but our contact tracers have struggled to extinguish the outbreak entirely.

At this stage, there still appears to be a low level of spread between households. Level 3 gives the virus more opportunities to spread and contact tracers will have to work harder to get ahead of cases.

The government will be hoping that case numbers are now small enough for contact tracing to focus on the suburbs where spread is still evident.

Read more:
With lockdowns easing for the rest of New Zealand, Auckland becomes the elimination frontline

Contact tracers are finding that most new cases are not being infected in essential workplaces or services but via extended family or friends. This means some increase in the number of workplaces and services operating at level 3 may be a relatively low-risk way to relax the lockdown, provided they carefully follow the appropriate procedures.

But it also means it’s absolutely crucial people continue to stick to their bubbles. The level of risk has reduced over the past five weeks but the danger has certainly not passed. We all need to resist the temptation to meet up with family or friends.

New cases beyond Auckland boundary

One of the unexpected cases was someone who tested positive while being held in custody after a court appearance. This man had been released from prison in Auckland on bail on September 8, returning home to Whakatīwai, which is outside the Auckland boundaries. He stayed at home, monitored electronically, until late last week when he returned to Auckland for a court appearance.

The most likely scenario is that he was infected as he left Auckland and has taken the virus home with him, passing it on to two primary school children in his household over the weekend of September 10-11. The two children would have been infectious at school last week so there is a high likelihood other children and parents associated with the school have caught the virus.

This is why the region has been put into its own level 4 restrictions for five days. This will allow time for testing and contact tracing to establish how widely the virus has spread there.

A more worrying possibility would be if the prisoner was infected in Whakatīwai by a family member. This could mean other cases were out in the community for some time. Whole-genome sequencing and testing in the community should tell us quickly if this was the case.

Where to from here

If this outbreak can’t be eliminated under level 3, it is unlikely Auckland will be able to return to level 2 for some time. The longer the outbreak goes on, the higher the risk it will eventually leak out of Auckland. This could send the whole country back into stricter alert levels while we complete the vaccination rollout, which is still months away.

In Auckland, more than 70% have had their first dose, but many still need their second. If there is a sustained growth in cases over the coming fortnight, the only real option would be to return to level 4 for a time to protect our health system.

The Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales are in this situation now with cases straining their health care systems. With no real prospect of elimination, they are now almost guaranteed to be under restrictions for several months.

Read more:
Whiteness in the time of COVID: Australia’s health services still leaving vulnerable communities behind

Whenever the government reduces alert levels, it shifts some of the responsibility for managing the outbreak to the public. There will certainly be relief at the easing of restrictions for some. But we need to enjoy the small additional freedoms that level 3 brings responsibly.

The fastest way to get out of lockdown is to eliminate this outbreak — and that relies on everyone continuing to stick to their bubble.

Michael Plank is affiliated with the University of Canterbury and receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.

Shaun Hendy is affiliated with the University of Auckland and has received funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.

– ref. New Zealand government takes a calculated risk to relax Auckland’s lockdown while new cases continue to appear – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-government-takes-a-calculated-risk-to-relax-aucklands-lockdown-while-new-cases-continue-to-appear-168269

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lara Herrero, Research Leader in Virology and Infectious Disease, Griffith University

Most people are wondering when and how the COVID pandemic will end and there are still no easy answers.

The word “endemic” is regularly mentioned, especially among public health leaders and experts as they discuss potential future scenarios. So, it’s important to define exactly it would mean for COVID to be endemic.

Scientists predict COVID will become endemic over time but there will still be sporadic outbreaks where it gets out of control. The transition from pandemic to endemic will likely play out differently in different locations around the world.

Read more:
Israel was a leader in the COVID vaccination race – so why are cases spiralling there?

‘Outbreak’, ‘Epidemic’, ‘Pandemic’ and ‘Endemic’

First let’s recap the public health terms Australians have been increasingly using in conversation over the last 18 months. These words cover the lifecycle of disease and include “outbreak”, “epidemic”, “pandemic” and “endemic”.

An outbreak is a rise in disease cases over what is normally expected in a small and specific location generally over a short period of time. Foodborne diseases caused by Salmonella contamination provide frequent examples of this.

Epidemics are essentially outbreaks without the tight geographical restrictions. The Ebola virus that spread within three West African countries from 2014–2016 was an epidemic.

A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads across many countries and many continents around the world. Examples include those caused by influenza A(H1N1) or “Spanish Flu” in 1918, HIV/AIDS, SARS-CoV-1 and Zika virus.

Finally, the normal circulation of a virus in a specified location over time describes an endemic virus. The word “endemic” comes from the Greek endēmos, which means “in population”. An endemic virus is relatively constant in a population with largely predictable patterns.

Viruses can circulate endemically in specific geographical regions, or globally. Ross River virus circulates endemically in Australia and the Pacific island countries, but is not found in other regions of the world. Meanwhile, rhinoviruses which cause the common cold circulate endemically around the world. And influenza is an endemic virus we monitor for its epidemic and pandemic potential.

Read more:
Whiteness in the time of COVID: Australia’s health services still leaving vulnerable communities behind

What’s the usual path from pandemic to endemic look like?

Over time and thanks to public health efforts from mask wearing to vaccination, the pandemic could disappear like small pox and polio did — or it might gradually become endemic.

Host, environment and virus factors combine to explain why some viruses are endemic while others are epidemic.

When we look at the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID, we see it is infecting human hosts with no prior immunity.

In terms of environment, the virus transmits better in cold, dry, crowded, close-contact, confined settings with poor ventilation.

Each virus has its own characteristics, from speed of virus replication to drug resistance. The new COVID strains are transmitted faster and cause different symptoms.

Viruses are more likely to become endemic if they become adapted to a local environment and/or have a continuous supply of susceptible hosts. For COVID these would be hosts with low or zero immunity.

Read more:
Four factors that increase the risk of vaccinated people getting COVID

How long will it take for COVID-19 to become an endemic disease?

Scientific mathematical modelling provide some idea of likely COVID epidemic outcomes.

Most public health experts currently agree COVID is here to stay rather than likely to disappear like small pox, at least for a while. They expect the number of infections to become fairly constant across years with possible seasonal trends and occasional smaller outbreaks.

Globally, the road from pandemic to endemic will be a rocky one. In Australia our national and state leaders are announcing future plans to reopen businesses and eventually borders. The process of doing this will result in the second nation-wide epidemic of COVID. People will die and our health systems will be challenged. Vaccination rates will protect many, but there are still those who won’t, or can’t get vaccinated. Herd immunity (from vaccination or infection) will play a key role in ensuring we move towards an endemic COVID.

With time, scientists predict COVID will become more prevalent among unvaccinated youths or those without prior exposure to the virus. This is what happens with common cold coronaviruses. Despite periodical spikes in caseloads each season or immediately after relaxation of economic, social, and travel restrictions, COVID will eventually become more manageable.

It won’t be the same everywhere

Countries will not enter an endemic phase at the same time because of variable host, environmental, virus factors including vaccination rates. The availability and rollout of booster vaccine shots each year or season will also shape this path. Poor vaccine coverage could allow the virus to continue at an epidemic level for longer. In a location where immunity wanes quickly and there are no booster shots available, COVID could go from endemic back to epidemic.

Once we see a stable level of SARS-CoV-2 transmission indicating a new “baseline” of COVID, we will know the pandemic has ended and the virus is endemic. This will likely include minor seasonal trends as we see now with flu.

The most important thing we can do to help reach a safe level of endemic COVID is to get vaccinated and continue to adhere to COVID-safe practices. By doing this we protect ourselves, those around us, and move together towards an endemic phase of the virus. If we don’t work together, things could turn for the worse very quickly and prolong the end of the pandemic.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. COVID will likely shift from pandemic to endemic — but what does that mean? – https://theconversation.com/covid-will-likely-shift-from-pandemic-to-endemic-but-what-does-that-mean-167782

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer King, Honorary Clinical Lecturer, University of Sydney

We’ve all done done a quick “just in case” wee before heading out or because we’re passing the bathroom. If you’re a parent, you might have also told the kids to “do a wee now so we don’t have to find a toilet later.”

Doing a “just in case” wee isn’t a problem if it’s just occasional and if you have normal bladder function.

But doing it too often, making a lifetime habit of it, can kick off a vicious cycle. You can end up training your bladder to “think” it needs to go when it’s only slightly full. And the problem can worsen over time.

If you’re always ducking to the loo to wee at even the slightest tingling sensation, have a go at resisting that first urge — and consider seeing your GP or a pelvic floor physiotherapist about it.

Read more:
Curious Kids: why is urine yellow?

Your bladder can probably hold more than you think

Most bladders are actually capable of holding quite a lot of fluid.

For those with normal bladders (that is, you haven’t been diagnosed as having an overactive or irritable bladder), every day capacity is between 400–600 mls. It should take about two hours for the water you drink to make its way to the bladder.

So if you drink a 600ml bottle of water, it would be perfectly reasonable not to actually need to go to the toilet until a couple of hours later. In reality, however, I know of people who say they drink just a small amount and head off to the bathroom shortly after.

What happens if you get into the ‘just in case’ habit?

To pass urine easily, we need the bladder muscle to contract and the muscles around the urethra and pelvic floor to relax.

This nice, coordinated pattern does not occur nearly as well if there is no real urge to void. You’ll probably be able to squeeze some urine out, but it’s not how the muscles are supposed to work.

The bladder’s response is to spasm and contract more aggressively and inappropriately.

The bladder gets used to holding a certain amount and if you are always emptying at that amount, it gets harder to hold more. The bladder “thinks” it is at capacity, when it is not. You end up with a pattern of uncoordinated emptying.

The good news is most people with a normal bladder can train themselves out of this habit. It’s about learning to recognise the signs and differentiate between a small urge and a real need.

You don’t need to run off at the first urge — have a go at resisting it and see what happens.

Of course, nobody is saying you should hold on until you feel absolutely tortured. If ignoring the first urge is causing real distress, you should talk to your GP or a pelvic floor physiotherapist.

Let your kids go to the toilet when they actually need to

Everyone remembers the kids who wet their pants at school or those who were always in trouble “because they should have gone to the toilet at recess”.

In fact, it’s better just to let kids go to the toilet when they need to, instead of berating them about not having gone at recess or “before we left”.

You can cause more damage (physical and psychological) in the long run if you give kids a hard time about toileting, load it with emotion, or train them into the habit of always going “just in case”. Don’t always prompt them to go to the toilet.

(In some situations, such as with people with dementia, it can be appropriate to prompt people to go to the toilet. But this is done after a reasonable number of hours when there should be a good amount of urine in the bladder. And it is a compromise arrangement where we try to minimise incontinence episodes and patient distress.)

Not everyone has a ‘normal’ bladder

The aim with toilet training is to learn to recognise the sensation of bladder filling and gradually develop the ability to resist bladder emptying until convenient and socially appropriate.

But for some people this is never completely or consistently achieved.

Many people – perhaps 30% of adults and large numbers of children – do not have a normal bladder. Rather, they have an overactive or irritable bladder.

This can make people want to go all the time or cause sudden urgency. They may not always make it to the toilet quickly enough. It can be impossible to prevent bladder leakage. Some people cope by limiting fluids or forever going “just in case”.

As with all bladder problems, it’s more common for women than men and tends to become more troublesome as we age.

Overactive bladders are unlikely to spontaneously improve. A good place to start would be to talk with your GP, a continence nurse or a specialist physiotherapist. These bladders need to be retrained using techniques learned from a specialist physio. Medication can sometimes help.

For most of us, though, overly frequent visits to the loo, or going “just in case” is a habit worth quitting.

Read more:
Health Check: how do I tell if I’m dehydrated?

Jennifer King is the chair of the Education Committee of the International Urogynecology Association and state chair of the NSW Continence Foundation. The positions are unpaid.

– ref. Why you shouldn’t make a habit of doing a ‘just in case’ wee — and don’t tell your kids to either – https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-make-a-habit-of-doing-a-just-in-case-wee-and-dont-tell-your-kids-to-either-167628

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Chin, Professor of Asian Studies, University of Tasmania

The announcement of a new strategic alliance between Australia, the US and UK (AUKUS) has caught many by surprise. Besides France, which reacted with fury over Australia’s scrapping of a major submarine deal with a French company, few countries were as surprised as Australia’s neighbours to the north, the ASEAN members.

In particular, Indonesia and Malaysia have come out strongly against Australia’s plan to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines with the help of the US and UK. Even Singapore, Australia’s most reliable ally in the region, has expressed concern.

The Afghanistan debacle has left a bad taste among many Indo-Pacific countries, and some are wondering if the timing of the AUKUS announcement was intended as a show of US power in the region to reassure jittery partners.

Fear of a nuclear arms race

To understand the deep anxiety in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and other ASEAN capitals requires some context on where they are coming from.

First, many of them think there is no such thing as acquiring nuclear-powered submarines without the prospect of acquiring nuclear weapons in the future.

Australia has not joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which requires parties to agree not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

The Morrison government says the treaty would be inconsistent with its alliance with the US, a nuclear weapon power.

Read more:
The nuclear weapons ban treaty is groundbreaking, even if the nuclear powers haven’t signed

However, Australia did ratify the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1973 and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1998. And Prime Minister Scott Morrison said last week Australia has “no plans” to pursue nuclear weapons.

Yet, some ASEAN countries are worried the AUKUS agreement is a clear signal the West will take a more aggressive stand towards China by admitting Australia to the nuclear club.

Both Indonesia (the unofficial leader of ASEAN) and Malaysia fear AUKUS will also lead to a major arms race in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

The potential for conflict in South China Sea

The new agreement also signals that the US, Australia and UK view the South China Sea as a key venue for this contest against China.

The ASEAN nations have always preached maintaining southeast Asia as a “zone of peace, freedom and neutrality”, free from interference by any outside powers. In 1995, the member states also signed the Treaty of Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, which committed to keep nuclear weapons out of the region. Not a single nuclear power has signed on to it.

Although everyone knows China, the US, Britain and France have ignored these protocols by manoeuvring armed warships through the South China Sea — not to mention China’s building of military bases on disputed islands there — ASEAN does not want to see this number grow.

Australian nuclear-powered submarines have the potential to change the dynamics in the South China Sea and make the Chinese much more nervous. There have already been plenty of “close encounter” incidents between the Chinese and US navies in the disputed waters, as well as the Chinese navy and ships belonging to ASEAN members. The region doesn’t need yet another potential “close encounter” to worry about.

The ASEAN states are already very worried about the China-US rivalry playing out in its backyard. And the new AUKUS agreement reinforces the idea that the opinions of the ASEAN members matter little when it comes to the superpowers and how they operate in the region.

Read more:
Jokowi’s visit shows the Australia-Indonesia relationship is strong, but faultlines remain

The region has always insisted on the idea of “ASEAN centrality” in their relations with the world — that ASEAN members must decide what is best for Southeast Asia — but as AUKUS shows, nuclear nations play a different game.

Indonesia is especially unhappy with Australia given the new agreement will affect it directly, given their common maritime border.

Morrison had already been forced to cancel his upcoming trip to Jakarta after Prime Minister Joko Widodo said he would be unavailable to meet — a decision that was made before the AUKUS announcement. This will add another layer to the strained relationship.

Is there anyone happy about the deal?

While in public, most southeast Asian governments have expressed uneasiness with AUKUS, there is a school of thought that says the more hawkish voices in the region will probably accept the agreement in the long term, as it will help keep China’s aggression in check.

For those in the “hawk” camp, the number one long-term threat to regional security is China. Many think the strategic balance of power has been tilting too much in Beijing’s favour in the past decade, especially after China started rushing to build military bases in the South China Sea and using its navy to protect Chinese fishing vessels in disputed waters.

So, they believe any moves to remind China it does not have a carte blanche to do what it wants in Southeast Asia is a good thing.

Japan and South Korea are clearly in this camp and their muted reaction to AUKUS suggests they are in favour of a “re-balancing” in the region. Taiwan and Vietnam are probably on this side, as well.

The only downside is that Australia may use its nuclear-powered submarines to bully ASEAN countries. If Canberra uses its nuclear submarines as a bargaining chip, it will simply turn public opinion in the region against Australia.

Implications for Australia-ASEAN relations

If anything, the AUKUS move reinforced the widely held perception that Australia’s mantra of being “part of the region” is, in fact, “empty talk”. Australia has firmly signalled its intentions to put its Anglo allies in the US and UK first.

AUKUS also reinforces the view that Australia cannot be accepted as a regional partner or player. This, of course, is nothing new. For years, the ASEAN bloc has seen Australia as “deputy sheriff” to the US, though this view would not necessarily be shared in public.

So, while AUKUS came as a surprise to many in the region, an alliance of this sort was probably bound to happen. It’s just that nobody expected it to happen so soon.

James Chin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why is southeast Asia so concerned about AUKUS and Australia’s plans for nuclear submarines? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-southeast-asia-so-concerned-about-aukus-and-australias-plans-for-nuclear-submarines-168260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

This week’s Newspoll, conducted September 15-18 from a sample a little over 1,500, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the last Newspoll, three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Labor (down two), 37% Coalition (up one), 10% Greens (steady) and 3% One Nation (steady).

50% (up three) were dissatisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance, and 46% (down three) were satisfied, for a net approval of -4. Morrison dropped into net negative ratings six weeks ago, but recovered to +2 in the last Newspoll. This is his worst net approval in Newspoll since the start of the pandemic.

Read more:
First negative Newspoll rating for Morrison since start of pandemic; 47% of unvaccinated would take Pfizer but not AstraZeneca

Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s ratings also slumped, with his net approval falling four points to -11, his worst since becoming opposition leader. Morrison led Albanese by 47-35 as better PM (50-34 previously). Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger.

The vote for all Others in this poll was 12% (up one). It’s plausible Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly’s campaign promoting United Australia Party has lured some anti-lockdown voters. At the 2019 election, UAP preferences split 65-35 to the Coalition.

If the proportion of the Others vote supporting UAP is higher than usual, this would explain why the Coalition’s two party figure in Newspoll was a point higher than would be expected from primary votes according to analyst Kevin Bonham.

There’s good news for the Coalition in other polling on voting intentions and COVID handling. The Morgan poll last week had the Coalition up two for a 52.5-47.5 Labor lead. The Essential poll had the federal government’s COVID rating up to 43-35 good from 39-36 in late August.

The Guardian’s datablog has 37.2% of the population (not 16+) fully vaccinated, up from 27.2% three weeks ago. We rank 33 of 38 OECD countries in share of population fully vaccinated (35th three weeks ago). The Age shows 46.7% of 16+ are fully vaccinated and 71.7% have received at least one dose.

Employment and GDP reports from the ABS suggest that the economy was in good shape before the Sydney and Melbourne lockdowns began. Once these cities reopen, the economy is likely to recover rapidly, boosting the Coalition’s chances.

It is too soon to know whether there has been any impact from the decision to enter into the so-called AUKUS pact with the US and UK. A snap Morgan poll found voters approved by 57-43, but Morgan’s SMS polls have not been reliable, and this poll was taken before more negative publicity about the deal.

Two Essential polls

In the mid-September Essential poll, the federal government’s rating on response to COVID rose to 43-35 good from 39-36 in late August and 41-35 in mid-August. The Victorian government’s “good” rating was up six to 50%, after falling 12 in late August, and the NSW government was up six to 46% after dropping two.

41% thought states with low or no COVID should be able to keep their borders closed for as long as they think it necessary, 37% until 80% of the 16+ population is fully vaccinated, and 23% until 80% of the total population is fully vaccinated.

39% thought restrictions for fully vaccinated people should be relaxed immediately, 44% thought they should be relaxed when everyone has the opportunity to be vaccinated and 17% thought vaccinated people should not be treated differently to unvaccinated.

In the late August Essential poll, 50% approved of Morrison’s performance (steady since early August) and 41% disapproved (up one), for a net approval of +9. Albanese’s net approval increased five points to +1. Morrison led as better PM by 47-26 (45-26 previously).

56% of NSW respondents thought the lockdown restrictions in their area were about right, 28% too strong and 16% too weak. In Victoria, these figures were 57% about right, 35% too strong and 8% too weak.

61% said fewer than 100 COVID deaths a year in Australia was acceptable to “live with”, 25% between 100 and 1,000 deaths a year and 19% between 1,000 and 3,000. Before COVID in 2019, there were over 169,000 deaths from all causes in Australia.

Coalition gains two points in mid-September Morgan poll

A Morgan poll, conducted September 4-5 and 11-12 from a sample of over 2,700, gave Labor a 52.5-47.5 lead, a 2% gain for the Coalition since late August. Primary votes were 38.5% Coalition (up 1%), 35% Labor (down 3.5%), 13% Greens (up 1.5%) and 3% One Nation (steady). The late August Morgan poll had Labor’s lead up 0.5% from mid-August.

A separate SMS Morgan poll, conducted last Thursday from a sample of over 1,700, had voters approving 57-43 of the government entering the AUKUS pact.

Late August YouGov COVID poll

A YouGov poll for the News Corp papers, conducted August 20-25 from a sample of over 3,000, was reported by The Poll Bludger. By 41-37, respondents thought lockdowns should be ended when “everyone has the opportunity to be fully vaccinated”. WA respondents were most pro-lockdown, while NSW and Victorian respondents were least so.

66% supported proof of vaccination being required to participate in a range of public activities, 63% supported only opening state borders for the vaccinated, and 68% the same for international borders. Just 23% were opposed to employers being able to demand their staff be vaccinated, with 69% support for this in public facing jobs and 45% support in all industries.

Given a choice between “lockdowns should be ended immediately”, “lockdowns must be part of Australia’s future until COVID is eliminated” and “vaccination is the pathway to ending lockdowns”, 64% selected the third option, 22% the second and 14% the third.

Participation down in August jobs report

The ABS reported last Thursday that the unemployment rate in August dropped 0.1% from July to 4.5%. However, this was because the participation rate fell 0.8% to 65.2%. The employment population ratio – the percentage of eligible Australians employed – fell 0.7% to 62.2%.

The ABS reported on September 1 that GDP in the June quarter increased 0.7% from the March quarter, and a massive 9.6% since June 2020 as the economy rapidly rebounded from the 7.0% COVID-caused crash in the June 2020 quarter.

With Sydney and Melbourne in lockdown for most of the September quarter period, it is very likely GDP will contract. But once restrictions are eased, economic activity is likely to rebound quickly, and this will assist the Coalition.

Canadian and German elections

The Canadian election is Tuesday AEST, with most polls closing at 11:30am AEST. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau called this election two years early, hoping to win a majority for his centre-left Liberals. But the Liberals’ position deteriorated quickly.

However, the rise for the right populist People’s Party has hurt the Conservatives. According to the CBC Poll Tracker, the Liberals are likely to again win the most seats, but be short of a majority under Canada’s first past the post system.

The German election is next Sunday September 26, with polls closing at 2am Monday AEST. In the Politico poll aggregate, the centre-left SPD leads the conservative CDU/CSU, which has been in government since 2005 under retiring chancellor Angela Merkel. Overall left parties hold a narrow lead over overall right parties.

I will be live blogging both these elections for The Poll Bludger. I live blogged last week’s California recall election, in which the Democratic governor easily defeated Recall.

Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Coalition gains a point in Newspoll, but Morrison slides back into net negative ratings – https://theconversation.com/coalition-gains-a-point-in-newspoll-but-morrison-slides-back-into-net-negative-ratings-168076

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The great economist John Maynard Keynes, when accused of inconsistency on some policy, is credited with saying: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

This point comes to mind in relation to the fractious debate over Australia’s “National Plan” to relax restrictions at 70% and 80% vaccination-rate thresholds.

This plan was agreed to by National Cabinet on August 6 — though apparently with a different interpretation for each government involved.

Read more:
National Cabinet leaves us in the dark about reopening the nation, so we’re left joining the dots

Underpinning it is modelling by the Doherty Institute, done in July this year. There has been plenty of argument about particular assumptions in the Doherty model. But the more fundamental problem is that it is effectively obsolete.

Delta has changed the landscape

Ideally models of any phenomenon are based on directly relevant data. In recent years the development of techniques for “big data” (large data sets, often derived from administrative records) have yielded a wide range of new insights.

In the case of COVID-19, the data needed for such an approach include evidence on the way in which changes in conditions change the “Reff” — the effective reproduction rate of the virus.

The Reff is a number that indicates the average number of new cases generated by each existing case. It is influenced by vaccination rates, movement restrictions and the capacity of testing and tracing measures to locate and isolate those infected. To avoid an uncontrolled pandemic we need to keep the Reff below 1 most of the time.

Read more:
We’ve heard of R numbers and moving averages. But what are k numbers? And how do they explain COVID superspreading?

When the Doherty Institute undertook its modelling there was essentially no data for Australia relevant to the scenario policy makers are now contemplating.

There had been no sustained outbreak of the Delta variant, and only one extended lockdown to give evidence on the effectiveness of various measures. So the Doherty Institute had to use a theoretical model with parameters derived from a combination of overseas evidence (from countries with experience very different to that in Australia) and the best guesses its experts could make.

We now have a great deal of data on the Delta variant and the effectiveness — or ineffectiveness — of various restrictions, and the extent to which people change their behaviour in an outbreak.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: The transition to living with ‘endemic’ COVID could be rough

In particular, we have learned testing and contact tracing becomes markedly less effective once case numbers grow into the hundreds per day, as has happened in NSW and Victoria. The Doherty Institute has reportedly revised its modelling to take account of this, and presented revised advice to National Cabinet, but neither the model results nor the changes in modelling have been made publicly available.

By the time we reach the vaccination levels nominated in the National Plan, probably in October or later, we will have a good deal more data. Crucially, we will know if the effective reproduction rate is above 1 (indicating exponential growth) or below (indicating contraction of case numbers).

Rather than sticking to a predetermined schedule, we need to be willing to adjust our policy responses in the light of the latest data, and the most up-to-date models we have available.

It’s like climate modelling

This situation is somewhat analogous to climate change modelling.

The fundamental science underlying climate change has been known for more than 150 years. As long ago as 1896, the Swedish chemist Arrhenius estimated that doubling the global concentration of carbon dioxide would raise the earth’s average temperature by 5℃.

When global warming became a concern in the 1980s, however, we had little more to go on than simple simulation models, with no certainty as to whether they were realistic representations.

That changed over the 1990s. Climate scientists refined general circulation models of the atmosphere and ocean, running on supercomputers and capable of incorporating vast quantities of data, and began modelling effects on soil and vegetation. Also, we are increasingly experiencing the predicted consequences of climate change, learning the hard way that the models were, if anything, conservative in their predictions.

Factoring in new evidence

With COVID-19 we don’t have time to develop the massive models that would make optimal use of the data that is daily becoming available. But we can use that data to improve our understanding of the way the virus spreads and the way our behaviour responds.

To some extent this is already happening with work done by the Burnet Institute, which is providing weekly updates to the NSW government. But this work is not being released publicly, and it appears the NSW government’s announced policies may be contrary to health advice based on the modelling.

The evolution of the pandemic is an interaction between the mutating characteristics of the virus and the way in which humans respond, interactively and collectively. For this reason, it is a mistake to let disciplinary boundaries decide whose advice should be heeded, and whose ignored. Epidemiologists, public health researchers, economists and other social scientists all have relevant expertise. In this emergency, it should be a case of “all hands to the wheel”.

Read more:
Delta is tempting us to trade lives for freedoms — a choice it had looked like we wouldn’t have to make

In these rapidly changing times it makes no sense to fix a policy plan based on a months-old model.

We need to respond flexibly to new evidence as it comes to hand. We need to consider all kinds of data, including new evidence on the transmissibility of the virus, estimates of the likely uptake of vaccines, and observations on the way restrictions reduce movement around our cities.

What we don’t need is more speculation about the hypothetical dates and vaccination rates at which various restrictions will be lifted (or perhaps, looking at overseas experience, reimposed). Let’s focus on the facts as they are now.

Richard Holden is President-elect of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

John Quiggin and Steven Hamilton do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Australia’s COVID plan was designed before we knew how Delta would hit us. We need more flexibility – https://theconversation.com/australias-covid-plan-was-designed-before-we-knew-how-delta-would-hit-us-we-need-more-flexibility-168189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Nichols, Senior Lecturer – Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne

Review: Palazzo di Cozzo, directed by Madeleine Martiniello

Every Melburnian over 40, and many under, knows (or thinks they know) who Franco Cozzo is. He rose to fame through self-promotion aided by a little bit of associated fascination around a man who sold a product seemingly exclusively to a non-English speaking sector of the community — first-generation Mediterranean migrants — and did it in Italian (and, sort of, Greek).

This was radical at a time when some Anglo-Australians insisted (sometimes virulently) on only English being spoken in their presence. Cozzo’s success speaks for itself: at its height, his empire was three large outlets in inner-city Melbourne and a huge product awareness.

Many Italian-Australians also silently cringed, not at Cozzo’s speaking of Italian on television, but at the promotion of a baroque furnishing mode that seemed to signify a gaudy conception of success.

You didn’t have to be a second-gen Italian-Australian to regard the Cozzo phenomenon with embarrassment: not just because of all the jokes made by Anglo-Australians, but because he was a particular kind of Italian: a Sicillian — read “peasant” — with all the attendant stereotypes.

In 1985, when television still united the nation in water-cooler moments, Cozzo commercials were voted the most hated by readers of The Age. Whatever else this signified, it showed strong product recognition. Were Cozzo launching himself on the world today, he would not be compelled to appear on mass media just to reach his niche market.

In that regard, the pre-internet age did us all a favour, establishing a new awareness that there were other cultures hiding in plain sight amongst what was still an assimilationist environment.

A gem of a documentary

Madeleine Martiniello’s documentary on Cozzo, Palazzo di Cozzo, was first scheduled for the Melbourne International Film Festival. Soon to show on ABC TV, it had its cinema premiere, ironically, in Perth.

There’s a lot more to the man than we could glean from the smooth, showy, handsome 50-something gentleman who addressed us from his 30-second spots with long strings of Italian, Greek and English ending in the famed accented pronunciation of “Norda Melbourne, Brunswick and Footiscray”.

Cozzo tells us, in this minor gem of a documentary, about his overbearing father, his beloved mother and his sister, Vincenzina, who died at the age of 12. The pictures of her atop one of the family horses are touching, as are photographs of youthful, directionless and somewhat resentful Franco and his “very tough daddy” arm-in-arm in an unidentified city street in the early 1950s.

Arriving alone in Melbourne on Australia Day, 1956, Cozzo took his horse-trading knowledge and became a Fiat dealer, a reality which gives some context to his hard-sell approach to beds and wardrobes.

He embraced television the following decade, presenting the Italian-language variety show Carosello on Channel 0 and then, briefly, Channel 7.

(In Palazzo di Cozzo, he claims it lasted three years; television listings from 1968-9 suggest less than 18 months).

Cozzo’s delivery of his life story told to the camera drifts between Italian and English without missing a beat, English subtitles covering both. Now in his 80s, a father of ten, he seems unwilling to distinguish between the public and private persona, but is resigned to dealing with the rumours.

Firstly, there have been many regarding mafia connections (which he denies). Additionally, his divorce and remarriage — his second wife, Assunta, appears here but his first, Antonietta, is only included in archival images — were controversial in the Italian community; the scandal is addressed implicitly. Another controversy, eldest son Luigi’s prosecution for drug dealing, is the outcome, Cozzo suggests, of his own leniency as a parent (as well as Luigi being a “fool”).

Luigi, who was cleared of a charge of threatening to kill his father five years ago, is not even mentioned by name in this film, let alone interviewed.

Marketing a legacy

There are two Franco Cozzo stores these days. The film concentrates on the purpose-built Footscray store and gives less time to the Brunswick outlet (North Melbourne, it seems, was lost in the divorce).

Much of the Footscray property is currently closed to the public and used as a storeroom. Yet Cozzo insists he will maintain a shopfront presence to sell his stock. Which makes sense: why wouldn’t he continue to make as much as he can of his image and his legacy?

As the man himself says: “No other people popular like Franco Cozzo in Melbourne”.

Palazzo di Cozzo is in select cinemas now.

David Nichols does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘No other people popular like Franco Cozzo in Melbourne’: a new film explores his colorful, hard-sell life – https://theconversation.com/no-other-people-popular-like-franco-cozzo-in-melbourne-a-new-film-explores-his-colorful-hard-sell-life-167352

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Menzel, Assistant Professor – First Nations Health, Bond University

Due to the ongoing effects of colonisation, First Nations peoples often experience socio-economic disadvantage and health inequality. The pandemic has no doubt worsened these conditions for some.

In addition, the health of Australia’s First Nations peoples is framed in a deficit focus. This means representing First Nations people through a narrative of difference, disparity, disadvantage, dysfunction, and deprivation, what is sometimes referred to as the 5Ds.

Viewing First Nations peoples through a deficit or negative lens is a form of racial segregation. However, this practice of white privilege or “whiteness” in health services can only cause harm to marginalised communities.

For instance, COVID-19 is more common in disadvantaged areas, where people face a triple threat – low vaccination rates, greater likelihood of getting COVID-19, and greater risk of dying.

Though the government has recently boosted efforts to reach vulnerable First Nations communities, there have long been complaints of lack of access to vaccines in high-risk areas.

Therefore, when the federal government speaks of 80% vaccination rate targets, it has somewhat felt like this means 80% of white, middle-class people without disabilities.

Read more:
The first Indigenous COVID death reminds us of the outsized risk NSW communities face

Whiteness dominating health services

Whiteness refers to perspectives, practices and policies that enable the dominance of white people and their culture in society and institutions.

Historically, pretty much every political and health system has been under the leadership of white, cis-gendered heterosexual (often middle-aged) men without disabilities. This has resulted in white perspectives being interwoven in health practice and policy development.

White, cis-gendered health is often the norm against which deviation is measured in health practices. This is detrimental to First Nations peoples and other marginalised communities.

For First Nations peoples, good health is holistic and includes physical, social, emotional, cultural, spiritual and ecological wellbeing. This is why First Nations peoples need to be included in health planning, particularly during the global pandemic.

COVID-19 disproportionately impacting First Nations people

First Nations peoples were identified as a priority group early in the vaccine rollout because globally, First Nations peoples are disproportionally more likely to die from COVID-19.

However, until recently First Nations peoples in Australia were six times less likely to contract COVID-19 because communities responded quickly to the first wave in 2020.

Aboriginal organisations came together drawing on experience from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and implemented culturally appropriate resources to share with the community.

However, there have been further waves of COVID-19 since then and increasingly restricted access to health care in response to lockdowns, border closures and the inadequate vaccine rollout. This has led to over 1,000 COVID cases in First Nations communities, and deaths that could have been avoided.

This is occurring while First Nations peoples and other communities continue to be confronted with racism when trying to access health care.

Read more:
The COVID-19 crisis in western NSW Aboriginal communities is a nightmare realised

Misinformation and government negligence

In Australia, First Nations peoples are significantly more likely to have two or more chronic health conditions. This makes us more vulnerable to contracting and dying from COVID-19.

Despite this, health services in regional, rural and remote areas with predominantly Aboriginal populations continue to be under-resourced by state and federal governments.

In addition, many people in western NSW communities are being turned away from health care facilities because they simply lack capacity.

In June, concerns were raised about vaccination rates in First Nations communities in Australia. However, we still have lower vaccination rates than the non-Indigenous NSW population.

There is indeed a level of vaccine hesitancy in the community. Inconsistent and sometimes inaccessible health messaging has contributed to understandable mistrust and fear.

However, First Nations peoples are among the most over-researched groups of people in the world. So, vaccine hesitancy can also be due to the long history in Australia of government trying to control our communities.

It certainly doesn’t help when white people continue to interfere with Indigenous health through the spread of false claims about COVID-19.

For instance, a self-proclaimed Indigenous prayer group in Western Australia spread misinformation that God will protect against COVID-19. This group turned out to be a white man from Brisbane.

And in the NSW community in Wilcannia, which has been hard hit by a recent wave of COVID-19 infections, First Nations people have been targeted by a group spruiking the benefits of ivermectin.

Both occurrences feel reminiscent of colonial missionary days, where white people regarded First Nations peoples as barbarian savages who needed controlling (mind and body), civilising, and educating in white, European ways.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Pat Turner on COVID – and god botherers – stalking Indigenous communities

Where to from here

We need to find ways to disrupt health systems currently excluding First Nations people.

Community self-determination is essential and Aboriginal community-controlled responses must remain a priority.

The government has made efforts recently alongside the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation to increase COVID vaccinations in communities across Australia. This is a positive start, but more must be done.

There is talk of the borders re-opening and the country opening up after vaccination rates exceed 75-80% of the adult population.
A Freedom Day, if you will.

So, when is our mob’s “Freedom Day”? Besides our ignored cries for sovereignty and self-determination, we cannot be left to die due to low vaccination rates while the rest of the country is deemed “safe”.

Whiteness needs to stop being the baseline from which health services originate. Unless there is a move to strengths-based strategies for vaccinating at-risk populations, such as First Nations communities, we will remain more likely to get sicker and die sooner.

Kelly Menzel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Whiteness in the time of COVID: Australia’s health services still leaving vulnerable communities behind – https://theconversation.com/whiteness-in-the-time-of-covid-australias-health-services-still-leaving-vulnerable-communities-behind-167701

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Richardson, Research Director, Surveys and International Assessments, Australian Council for Educational Research

More Australian 15 year olds feel they are familiar with global issues such as climate change, migration, causes of poverty and equality between men and women than the OECD average.

But only 8% of Australian students say they are learning two or more foreign languages, compared to 50% of students across OECD countries.

These are some of the results of the OECD’s 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which included efforts to measure students’ global competence. It gathered the perceptions of students, teachers and school principals on whether 15 year olds have the skills, knowledge and attributes to thrive in global contexts.

How students were tested

Teachers and students filled out a questionnaire on students’ awareness of global issues and cultures, skills (both cognitive and social) and attitudes, which covered all four dimensions of global competence.

For instance, student awareness of global issues was measured by asking students to indicate how informed they felt they were about:

• climate change and global warming

• global health (e.g. epidemics)

• migration (movement of people)

• international conflicts

• hunger or malnutrition in different parts of the world

• causes of poverty

• equality between men and women in different parts of the world.

Students were asked to respond on a four-point scale: I have never heard of this; I have heard about this but I would not be able to explain what it is really about; I know something about this and could explain the general issue; and I am familiar with this and I would be able to explain this well.

Australian students well versed on global issues

On the whole, the data is reassuring. On almost all measures, Australian students were above the OECD average. This included awareness of global issues, respect for people from other cultures, positive attitudes towards immigrants and a greater sense of global mindedness.

This reflects Australian students’ access to global news, and their ability to interact with people from different cultures.

Around two-thirds of Australian students reported having contact with people from other countries in their family, at school and in their circle of friends. Almost half of Australian students reported having contact with people from other countries in their neighbourhood.

Beyond this, Australian students reported more opportunities to participate in intercultural learning practices and to engage in global competence learning activities than the OECD average. These include learning about different cultures at school and learning about the histories of diverse cultural groups that live in our, and other, countries.

Read more:
5 Australian books that can help young people understand their place in the world

But further improvements can be made. Australian students were consistently outperformed by peers in Canada and Singapore in the global competence stakes.

For instance, only 43% of students said “I am often invited by my teachers to give my personal opinion about international news”, which was lower than students in Singapore, Canada, Korea, Poland, Hong Kong (China), Germany and across the OECD.

Male students lagged behind female students, other than for their self-efficacy in explaining global issues. This included asking how students believed they would perform on their own in areas such as discussing the different reasons people become refugees.

Students in Tasmania, in regional areas and those born in Australia trailed their more globally-empowered counterparts. This could partly reflect different concentrations of cultural diversity in different parts of Australia.

Australian students aren’t choosing to learn languages

Despite the positives, the data indicate some clear areas of concern. Australian students reported a greater awareness of intercultural communication than their OECD peers. While being aware of intercultural communication is certainly useful, being able to communicate with people from different countries in their own languages is even better.

Unfortunately, in comparison to their OECD peers, a mere 12% of whom do not learn a foreign language, 64% of 15-year-old Australian students reported language learning was not part of their lives.

This is disheartening. Learning a foreign language is hard. It teaches valuable lessons about vulnerability, compassion for those who struggle to be understood and differences in cultural norms.

Language learning has been shown to enhance cognitive abilities and support improved reading and maths achievement. To achieve mastery, language learning requires determination and resilience — attributes students will need to thrive as adults.

Read more:
Thinking of taking a language in year 11 and 12? Here’s what you need to know

Australian students also reported a low level of interest in learning about other cultures: how people live in different countries, their traditions and how others see the world.

Additionally, just over a third of Australian students felt learning more about the religions of the world was important, compared with half of Singaporean students and significantly higher proportions of students in countries such as New Zealand and Canada. Religious understanding enhances tolerance, peace and mutual respect at home and abroad, so this finding is a concern.

Language learning in Australia is patchy across school and states. Some states have no language policy at all. This needs to change. A key focus should be on ensuring that adequately trained and knowledgeable language teachers are available in all schools.

If Australia is to fulfil its potential on the global stage, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, our students need to gain the skills to equip them to thrive in a world characterised by cultural intermingling. As Kwame Anthony Appiah eloquently suggests, “conversations across boundaries can be delightful, or just vexing: what they mainly are, though, is inevitable”.

The data reported here was collected by ACER, who were funded by the Department for Education, Skills and Employment to coordinate Australia’s participation in PISA 2025.

– ref. Australian students say they understand global issues, but few are learning another language compared to the OECD average – https://theconversation.com/australian-students-say-they-understand-global-issues-but-few-are-learning-another-language-compared-to-the-oecd-average-168073